Japanese in Chicago

During World War II, Japanese-Americans opted to live in Chicago rather than be interned, primarily in camps on the Pacific Coast.

[2] Some Japanese in Chicago operated businesses such as restaurants, gift shops, and housing units.

Japanese worked in factories making materials to support the war, including aircraft and electronics.

[9] Some anti-Japanese violence occurred, including the destruction of windows of a Japanese gift shop.

Almost half of the Japanese who had settled in Chicago from the internment camps moved back to the West Coast.

Most of them were white collar households who had higher incomes and better educations who wish to find superior schools for their offspring.

As a result, Osako stated that the next generations of Nisei in the Chicago area will have less contact with the wider Japanese American community in the central city than before.

[12] As of 2006 there is a high intermarriage rate among the Japanese, and there is a large amount of assimilation into the larger American community.

[4] The mystery novel Clark and Division by Naomi Hirahara, which focuses on a Japanese-American family during World War II, is set in that area.

As of 2006 several thousand Japanese nationals working as representatives of companies live in the Chicago area.

In the pre-World War II era there was a YMCA mission that served Japanese students.

[15] In the Chicago area, 60% of Japanese people work in professional and white collar jobs.

The Mitsuwa Marketplace, a shopping center owned by Japanese in Arlington Heights, opened around 1981.

[16] Other media include the Japanese American Service Committee Newsletter; Weekly J-Angle (ジャングル）; Q Magazine (Qマガジン); The JACLer, the newsletter of the JACL; Prairie Magazine (プレーリー); Pavilion (パビリオン); and US Shimbun's Chicago section.