• Japanese American Museum of San José (JAMsj)
• San José Buddhist Church Betsuin
• Wesley United Methodist Church
• Issei Memorial Building (Kuwabara Hospital)

San José's Japantown — known in Japanese as Nihonmachi — developed from the site where Japanese immigrants first settled in the Santa Clara Valley, beginning around 1890 when Issei (first-generation) farmworkers arrived to work the valley's orchards. Without an established community of their own, these early immigrants initially found refuge in Heinlenville, San José's last Chinatown, located just east of what became Japantown. As families formed and the community grew, Nihonmachi developed its own distinct identity along North Fifth and Sixth Streets, with bathhouses, boarding houses, restaurants, and social clubs serving a permanent community by the early 1900s. Buildings from that era — including the Issei Memorial Building (Kuwabara Hospital), the Taihei Hotel, and structures from the original Heinlenville Chinatown — still stand within the district today.

Japantown endured the forced removal of its community during World War II, when Executive Order 9066 sent Japanese Americans to internment camps in 1942. After the war, returning residents rebuilt Nihonmachi, and the district became one of the most welcoming places in California for Japanese Americans reclaiming their lives. Today San José's Japantown is one of only three remaining historical Japantowns in the United States — alongside San Francisco and Los Angeles — and is widely recognized as the most authentic, having never been substantially demolished and rebuilt.

MY-NHD's Japantown tee honors one of America's most resilient cultural districts — a neighborhood built by Issei pioneers and kept alive by every generation that followed.