Sento at Sixth and Main: Preserving Landmarks of Japanese American Heritage

by Gail Dubrow, Karen Cheng, Donna Graves

From bathhouses to birthing centers, a haunting topography of lost Japanese American culture.

Quietly elegant, yet issuing a clarion call for intervention, Sento at Sixth and Main rediscovers early Japanese American culture and presents an indisputable case for the preservation of ten key landmarks in California and Washington. The authors re-create the Japanese American experience, intertwining rich oral histories from community members with current and historical photographs, plus personal snapshots, archaeological findings, newspaper clippings and other wonderfully nontraditional sources.

So much of the Japanese American past was lost after the attack on Pearl Harbor; terrified families burned scrapbooks and personal possessions for fear they would be labeled as traitors. Sento at Sixth and Main is a graceful effort to find that past and to explain that, even now, it is still not too late to include these places as part of the American cultural landscape. 172 b/w photographs and illustrations.

Author Biography: Gail Dubrow is a professor in the College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Washington. She lives in Seattle. Donna Graves directed the Rosie the Riveter Memorial Project in Richmond, CA. She lives in Berkeley. Gail Dubrow is the winner of the 2004 Antoinette Forrester Downing Award from the Society of Architectural Historians.

232 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2002

Reviews

[Tara]

"Sento at Sixth and Main" offers an artful and thorough look at ten sites of Japanese-American importance, in terms of the American historical record. Some of the sites still exist and are preserved either locally or nationally, some are in the midst of preservation classification debates, and some no longer exist in a tangible form. Regardless, the spaces and places chosen and discussed are illuminating and powerful in giving voice to the often forgotten and intensely problematic Japanese-American experience, especially in the early waves of immigration and subsequent cultural navigation and assimilation. Perhaps my favorite aspect of this publication is that it was funded via the Saettle Arts Commission's Percent for Art fund, thereby cultivating an alternate definition of what is thought of as public art and cultural preservation. If any of these topics are of interest to you, I highly recommended this book.