In modern day Los Angeles, the three largest minority groups that make up the city are Hispanic or Latino, Asian, and African American. These communities are credible pillars of the Los Angeles we know and love today, and are able to further warrant their place in Los Angeles culture through their complex and weaving histories. During World War II, those of Japanese descent were indiscriminately relocated and incarcerated into internment camps after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The internment and thus the absence of Japanese in Los Angeles made room for Black Americans during a time of scarce segregated housing, introducing the development of Black communities like Bronzeville. As pillars of California’s agricultural industry at the time, the absence of Japanese Americans also created a significant labor shortage that led to the creation of the Bracero Program, a short-term contract labor program that brought millions of Mexican workers to the United States. After the dissolution of the relocation and internment orders, Japanese Americans were confronted with newcomers that seemingly took their place. In this confrontation, Japanese Americans, Black Americans, and Mexican Americans were met with each other and their own biases and prejudices, thus leading to areas of both discomfort and conflict, and coexistence and coalition.  

My research demonstrates the interconnectedness of Los Angeles’s ethnic communities and how their wartime experience shaped relations between African, Japanese, and Mexican Americans. This study illustrates how citizenship, race, ethnicity, and national boundaries have been dynamically constructed and negotiated. This project relies on Proquest’s Historical Black Newspaper database and The California Digital Newspaper Collection to look at ethnic affinity-organized newspapers like the Calexico Chronicle, the Los Angeles Sentinel, and the Pacific Citizen and how each publication wrote about Japanese internment and resettlement from 1942 through 1952.