When the first Japanese began to arrive in San Jose in the 1890’s, they settled east of Sixth Street between Jackson and Taylor Streets, near the Heinlenville Chinatown. Named for its owner and benefactor, John Heinlen, Heinlenville came about after San Jose’s second Chinatown mysteriously burnt to the ground in 1887 and Heinlen, who liked the Chinese, offered up his own property for the new location. Ignoring the public outrage, it was here that Heinlen built a Chinatown entirely out of brick which he then rented to the Chinese at very low rates.

The decision by the Japanese immigrants to build their wood-frame buildings near Heinlenville made sense, as there were few places where the Japanese felt safe at this time, and the Heinlenville vicinity was less restrictive because the Chinese already resided there. Employment was easier to come by as well, because field bosses looking to recruit cheap labor to work the fields came to the district in search of workers.

This new immigrant population was comprised almost entirely of single men seeking employment as migrant workers in the nearby fruit orchards. Their lives were not easy, and they lived in boarding houses that were nothing more than shoddy bunkhouses. Since most had left all family and friends back home in Japan, they were also extremely isolated. By the 1930s, Heinlenville was largely populated by bachelors and was finally torn down to make way for the City’s corporation yard, which still occupies the site today.

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