Day 68: Nisei VFW Post, Nisei War Memorial, Sacramento, California
📌APIA Every Day 68 - Located at 1515 Fourth Street in Sacramento, California, the post sits on the site of what was once Sacramento's Japantown. The post was chartered on February 7, 1947, by Japanese American veterans of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and the Military Intelligence Service, who were barred from joining existing VFW posts due to racial exclusion policies. It was the first of 14 segregated Nisei VFW posts established in California, with the support of Alva J. Fleming, a VFW district leader who later became California's VFW state commander in 1957. The post initially met at the Sacramento Buddhist Church before acquiring its current building in 1955. That building — originally constructed in 1951 by African American entrepreneur Phelix Flowers as the Flower Garden restaurant, which also served as a banquet facility for an African American chapter of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks barred from the main Elks Tower — was purchased by the post with assistance from the local Japanese American Citizens League after Flowers declared bankruptcy in 1954. The post dedicated it as the Nisei War Memorial Hall, with an honor roll listing members killed during the war.
The building's context is directly tied to the erasure of Sacramento's Japantown. Before World War II, Sacramento's Japanese American community numbered over 8,000 residents and ranked fourth in size among Japantowns nationally. The mass incarceration of Japanese Americans under Executive Order 9066 in 1942 effectively dismantled the neighborhood. While some residents returned after the war, Sacramento's Japantown did not recover as Los Angeles's and San Francisco's did. In 1957, the Sacramento City Council voted to demolish the core of the neighborhood for what is now Capitol Mall. The Post 8985 building, newly constructed when redevelopment began, is the only remaining property from the former Japantown.
Post 8985 continues to operate as a nonprofit, veterans memorial, and community center. Its membership has expanded to serve the broader APIA community, and it sponsors a Boy Scout troop and other organizations. An exterior Japanese American civil liberties monument includes interpretive panels on Sacramento's Japantown and the wartime incarceration period. The property was nominated to the National Register of Historic Places in 2019 and received Sacramento landmark designation in 2021. An active restoration effort, led by Post 8985 and the Sacramento JACL, is currently underway: the first phase — ground-floor repairs including a new ceiling, roof, and electrical upgrades — is complete, and a second phase planned for 2026 aims to convert the upper floor into a museum for Nisei veteran artifacts and Japantown history, pending fundraising. Historical records donated by the post are also part of the Japanese American Archival Collection at Sacramento State University.
LEARN MORE:
Rafu Shimpo: Nisei VFW Post Designated as Historic Landmark
Sacramento State: Japanese American Archival Collection
Inside Sacramento: Japantown Lives Volunteers restore a landmark filled with history
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