Across Los Angeles, the memory of injustice is being used to block the homes our city desperately needs. As a fourth-generation Japanese American, I’ve watched the mantra “Never Again”—born from the trauma of Internment during World War II—turn from a rallying cry of inclusioninto a tool of exclusion.
Ironically, today’s tactic echoes that dark period of history more than it warns against it. Internment was the culmination of neighbors using fear to deny people a house and a home.
In 1923, Hollywood residents nailed a large sign to the front of a bungalow south of Sunset Boulevard: “JAPS KEEP MOVING — THIS IS A WHITE MAN’S NEIGHBORHOOD.” This new Hollywood Protective Association soon convinced the City Council to condemn the properties of their Japanese American neighbors, expelling them from the heart of Los Angeles.
Two decades later, those same Japanese Angelenos were rounded up at gunpoint and forced into desolate camps. When they returned years later, they found their homes sold, or if they were lucky, merely vandalized with “NO JAPS WANTED.”
Since then, Japanese Americans have declared “Never Again,” not just for ourselves, but for anyone facing exclusion. That’s why it’s a gross distortion to invoke the past mistreatment of Japanese Americans to fight against housing and new neighbors.
In Little Tokyo, activists have likened a proposed housing development to the wartime mistreatment of Japanese Americans. The proposed Fourth & Central project would replace warehouses south of Little Tokyo with nearly 1,600 new apartments, including over 250 deeply affordable homes reserved for low-income renters.
In my neighborhood, Sawtelle Japantown in West Los Angeles, opponents of a modest zoning update allowing for more homes also invoked the history of Internment to justify their resistance. Most making that comparison were neither Japanese American nor lived near the neighborhood’s historic core. When that argument fell flat, they pivoted to the local history of the Tongva. Clearly, the history of Internment was just a convenient shield for the status quo.
Unfortunately, this rhetoric has even spread to City Hall. In August, the Los Angeles City Council voted to oppose Senate Bill 79, a state bill legalizing modest apartment buildings near major transit stops. Explaining her opposition, Councilmember Traci Park cited the legacy of Internment in Sawtelle. Yet again, past injustice wasn’t invoked to fight exclusion, but to entrench it.
This misreads the legacy we inherit. In the decades after Internment, the Japanese American Citizens League fought housing discrimination and helped lay the groundwork for the 1968 Fair Housing Act. Camp survivors marched alongside Black, Latino, and Jewish neighbors against redlining, a legacy that continues today as multiracial coalitions challenge exclusionary barriers like single family zoning. Their moral ground was clear: no one should be denied a home because of who they are or where they come from.
Especially amid our city’s deep housing shortage, new housing is a tool of inclusion, allowing communities to welcome new neighbors while helping current ones stay rooted. Research shows that building more housing at all income levels eases rents and combats homelessness. To keep Angelenos housed in the communities they love, every neighborhood needs more housing.
Honoring a neighborhood’s history means making space for its future. I grew up with Little Tokyo as a cultural anchor and understand the essential role of ethnic neighborhoods as living hubs of culture and community. While Little Tokyo once faced the bulldozers of urban renewal, today no one is proposing to build over its historic heart. Instead, some are digging in their heels over proposed homes on industrial lots outside Little Tokyo’s traditional boundaries. If there’s ever a place to build something inclusive and minimally disruptive, it’s there.
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It’s precisely by building more housing in our neighborhoods that we secure their future. New homes keep the door open for future generations to live near the businesses and gathering places that define these communities. Neighborhoods stay alive not by freezing in time, but by evolving to make room for the people who keep them vibrant.
Apartments are not Internment. They are how Los Angeles keeps the next generation. They are how a teacher can live closer to her school; how a retiree can downsize without moving away; how a young family can stay close to their loved ones and culture. New housing is a moral good, especially when built on urban land that currently houses no one. When tens of thousands of Angelenos sleep on the streets, we must ask ourselves: what side of history are we on?
And importantly, if we must invoke “Never Again,” let it be to stand with our neighbors, not in the way of the homes they so urgently need. The lesson from past injustice is clear: open doors wider, don’t bolt them closed.
Chris Tokita is a data scientist and housing advocate who lives in Sawtelle Japantown in West Los Angeles. He serves on the board of directors for Abundant Housing LA, a nonprofit focused on solving Southern California’s housing crisis through policy reform that will build more housing at all levels of affordability.