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A Racial Trust: The Japanese Ywca And The Alien Land Law, Brant T. Lee

Brant T. Lee

When a dispute arose over the old Japanese Young Women's Christian Association (“YWCA”) building in San Francisco's Japantown neighborhood, it seemed yet another example of a community institution inevitably ceding to the demands of the modern market economy. Instead, what has resulted has been an exercise in legal archaeology, a refreshing insight into the collective memory of the Japanese American community, and a legal theory that brings to light several central episodes in Asian American legal history and puts them to practical use in a contemporary property dispute.

In 1996, the San Francisco YWCA decided it could no longer afford …