The War on Grant Avenue: Business Competition and Ethnic Rivalry in San Francisco’s Chinatown, 1937-1942

Abstract

In the 1930s, Japanese Americans owned a majority of the curio shops on Grant Avenue, the main tourist thoroughfare of San Francisco’s Chinatown. During this same period, Japan invaded China, starting a conflict that shaped relations between San Francisco’s Chinese American and Japanese American communities as well. While some Japanese American elites began to describe Issei business successes in Chinatown as an extension of Japan’s triumphs in Asia, the city’s Chinese American merchants cast their competitors as invaders and urged white tourists to boycott them. The ensuing “war” on Grant Avenue demonstrated the way the city’s traditional anti-Asian laws and practices constrained the opportunities and shaped the identities of San Francisco’s Asian Americans, ultimately encouraging them to struggle against each other for whatever small advantages they could gain.