In spite of historical events that might have torn other neighborhoods apart, the Western Addition has managed to rebuild itself time and time again.

In the last 60 years, residents have been through being placed in internment camps, urban renewal and being outpriced in their own housing market.

The neighborhood is now facing new challenges. Four major Japantown businesses, including the Kinetsu Mall, are up for sale and the constantly ongoing construction of the new Yoshi’s Jazz Club and high-rise condominiums leave the future of the neighborhood uncertain.

With more changes on the horizon those who have resided in the area for years reflect on how the neighborhood used to be, how it is now and expectations for the future.

“It kind of makes me sentimental in my old age,” said Hatsuro “Hats” Aizawa, 81, who has lived in Japantown for nearly 70 years. “This was the place where everybody came to meet.”

February is a significant month for two of the neighborhood’s communities. African Americans will be celebrating Black History Month, while the Japanese people will remember the day President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the order of internment on Feb. 19, 1942.

These two groups have parallel histories in the Western Addition. At the turn of the century, mostly Eastern European immigrants populated the neighborhood. Yet, the trickle of Japanese immigrants became a full-fledged boom in the 1920s, as more people flocked to this area where others before them had established roots.

However, all this changed after the Pearl Harbor bombing in December 1941, when the U.S. government forced Japanese residents to abandon their homes and sent them to concentration camps.

Around the same time African Americans were coming to San Francisco looking for job opportunities in the defense plants and shipyards. Many of them moved into the Western Addition and houses left vacant by the Japanese.

Aizawa had lived in a house on Post and Buchanan streets for 17 years before his family was forced out. He said that in the post-war Japantown transformed into a prosperous African American neighborhood. Then in the 1960s after a decline, the city designated the area a “slum," targeted the Western Addition for urban renewal. Many returning Japanese, along with African Americans, were forced out once again.

Reggie Pettus remembers Fillmore before urban renewal.

He fondly remembers the African-American owned jazz clubs, restaurants and specialty stores that ran up and down Fillmore Street. The clubs were the biggest draw, with legends like Billie Holiday playing the best ones.

He is also conscious of what urban renewal did to those same blocks in the late 1960s. Businesses were bought and torn down, but the lots were empty for years afterward. Reggie said the city ran out of money to buy up his block, so he was able to keep his shop; he now keeps the certificate that gave him priority to return to the neighborhood on his wall.

The neighborhood began to build itself up again in the 1980s as new businesses opened. Pettus said the neighborhood hasn’t really been the same since the its heyday, but there are things he has come to appreciate about the Western Addition today.

“I love it, and I got everything at my convenience,” said Pettus. “I like the diversity and everyone gets along well...although we are the only black [business owners] on the block."

The Western Addition is still changing today. Corporate stores like Starbucks and Subway are up and down Fillmore Street. Different organizations have tried revitalizing the music scene by opening the jazz club Rasella’s, with plans to open two more in the future. Most of the old residents are gone because they couldn’t afford to come back. The old Japanese and African American populations are seeing an influx of new residents ranging from Korean and Ethiopians, to single young professionals from other parts of the city.

But the people here are used to it.

“The Western Addition always brings on a new migration,” said Robert Harlin, owner of the Chicago #2 Barbershop on Divisadero and Eddy Streets. “You just have to adjust to those changes. This neighborhood is a melting pot of people.”