Fire Destroys Historic J-Town Home
Rafu Staff and Wire Services
Saturday, Dec. 1, 2007

100-year-old building in San Jose community razed, leaving one resident dead.

SAN JOSE, Calif.— One man was killed in a four-alarm fire that destroyed a his­toric building in San Jose’s Japantown that served as a boarding house for 12 men, authorities said Wednesday.

It was the third fatal fire in the city this year.

Fellow residents of the house, three of whom had to jump out of windows to safety, recalled hearing the victim scream­ing from inside the building shortly after the fire started. They tried putting out the flames with a hose but the fire proved to be too powerful.

Fire investigators found the body early Wednesday morning after fighting the flames since the late evening Tuesday. The victim has not been identified.

Firefighters rescued three men, and eight other men escaped on their own, of­ficials said. The building appeared to be a total loss, said Fire Capt. Craig Schwinge, though a nearby historic church was saved.

The American Red Cross has provided aid to the 11 displaced residents and no other injuries were reported. The fire department is still investigating the cause of the blaze.

The house, which was built 1905, was originally a set of portable classrooms. Ten years later, a Japanese American midwife named Mrs. Hori purchased them and had them moved to her property at 580 Fifth St. near Jackson Street. She converted the classrooms into a site for her midwifery practice, as well as a home for her family.

“What a loss [the building’s destruc­tion] was for Japantown. And the loss of life makes it that much more tragic. Even thought it was a modest building, it still held so much history,” said Donna Graves, director at Preserving California’s Japantowns.

Many local Nisei claim the site as their birthplace, according to californiajapan­towns.org. The structures later became a rooming house after the Hori family moved out.

The destruction of the Hori Midwifery is the second fire to damage a historic site in Japantown this year. Earlier in the summer, San Jose Tofu suffered damage from a fire at its Jackson Street location. The trend has some community advocates concerned.

“This shows how fragile these connec­tions to the past really are,” said Graves.

However, visitors to the historic district say the fires will not deter them from go­ing.

“The area has been going through a revitalization,” said local resident Elaine Sakamoto, who visits Japantown several times a month to shop and eat. “There are new stores opening up down there, new restaurants going up there. They had been sprucing it up and it is looking nice.”

Tuesday’s fire came at a time where community officials have begun putting up markers designating certain buildings in Japantown as historic. One has been planned for the Hori site, but the marker’s construction will be delayed until after cleanup of the site is completed. The proj­ect is on schedule and organizers hope all the markers will be up at the end of the year, according to Leslie Masunaga of the Japantown Community Congress.