Museum of Riverside

The Lemon Street House

Several of the Harada's neighbors in the predominantly white neighborhood formed a committee to persuade Jukichi Harada to sell his home. When he refused, they brought the case to the California Attorney General’s Office and Riverside Superior Court. By mid-1916, California vs. Harada had gained national and international attention due to the sensitive relationship between the United States and the emerging international power of Japan. In the fall of 1918, Judge Hugh Craig of Riverside Superior Court upheld the Alien Land Law but ruled that American born children of aliens were entitled to all the constitutional guarantees of citizenship, including land tenure, under the 14th Amendment.

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the Harada family, with mother Ken, father Jukichi, and their six children (Masa Atsu, Mine, Sumi, Yoshizo, Harold, and Clark, and adopted son Roy Hashimura) continued to live in their Lemon Street home. Jukichi and Ken Harada operated their Washington Restaurant and boarding house businesses. By 1941, the older Harada children had left Riverside to pursue careers in other parts of California. Only Sumi and Harold remained, caring for their parents and operating the restaurant.

The Harada family members had achieved the American Dream - home ownership, advanced education, and professional careers - but their Japanese ancestry would once again be used to deny them basic civil rights in the aftermath of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Watch a partial reenactment of the seminal Harada trial heard in the Riverside County Courthouse, 1916-1918.  Click here to hear some of the reactions of local high school students involved in the event.

Click the thumbnail images below to enlarge
	Judge Hugh Craig's ruling affirms that American-born children of aliens may own property.
	Family photograph, circa 1928. Rear, left to right: Mine, Mary (Masa Atsu Harada’s wife), Masa Atsu, Calvin (Masa Atsu and Mary’s son), Sumi, Clark; front, left to right: Yoshizo, Ken, Harold, and Jukichi.
(Museum of Riverside, Harada Family Archives)