(Taiko drums) (Japanese singing) The destruction of J-town was cultural genocide.

Eagle Laundry is gone, Whitmore Court's gone, PeeWee's Conoco gas station is gone.

The inability to show that to my children creates a sadness in me.

I just wish I could have done something.

Okay, my name is Paul Iwasaki.

I'm a retired juvenile court jud Prior to that, I was a Salt Lake City police officer.

I was the first Asian police officer on that department.

I grew up in Salt Lake City.

I was born and raised in the heart of Salt Lake City, in the heart of J-town, in the Whitmore Apartments.

That's where I lived until approximately my ninth grade year.

The area from 300 West to West Temple, and all along First South there was my world.

Everything I needed was there.

(camera clicking) It was idyllic and for kids growing up, it was a place where they could go and feel accepted, feel like they belong, some place that they can identify with.

(somber piano) (crowd cheering) It was one of my chores to take a laundry bag full of my parents' work clothes to the Eagle Laundry to get cleaned, and I'd go in there and the person always greeting me was Misako Imamura.

And I could see her face as if she were standing in front of me today.

And the same with all those other people and all those other shopkeepers.

They made an impact in my psyche.

I remember each one of them now, as they were then.

(camera clicking) (somber piano continues) You know, I really didn't have much experience outside of J-town until I went to school.

At some point in time, yeah, I realized, yeah, I'm not like these people.

And I'd look in the mirror, I'd say, what is it about me that makes me different than, you know, my classmates?

I don't know how old I was at that time, but there was a point in time where I do remember knowing that I was different.

Even if you live in a safe com munity like J-town was for me, discrimination will find you wherever you are.

(crowd chattering) I grew up during the Civil Rights Movement.

And I would watch the news and I'd watch all the inhumanity that was being inflicted upon those Freedom Marchers, and it shook me to my core.

Then when the March on Washington took place, I understood and knew what was happening.

This march will go down as- But I wasn't as acutely aware of what was happening on my own block.

(drum hitting) The idea of building a convention center was born out of this long shot effort that Utah was trying to mak at getting the Winter Olympics.

From there, where are we gonna build it, I suppose.

And how they ultimately decided on J-town, it was the path of least resista You had a community there that was vulnerable, because they were minorities.

They were small.

They were marginalized, that it was just an easy place to take over.

For a lot of them, everything was lost.

The Downtown Planning Association, told the Japanese American community they wanted to help reestablish those being displaced and form a Little Tokyo.

But they didn't relocate, they didn't build their businesses up someplace else.

And New Little Tokyo never came to be.

That this grave social injustice was taking place, that these people were being taken over by the government, the destruction of J-town was nothing more than cultural genocide.

I feel guilty that I wasn't more aware of what damage and effect it was gonna have on those people's lives.

(piano playing) (quiet chattering) (bicycle bell) (old car engine) (shop door bell) Whenever I come across something that reminds me of J-town, I reflect back on my time.

(busy street sound) (horn honking) (crowd cheering) If there is no legacy or no memory of any of that, it'd be as if that community and those people and what they did here never happened.

(children chattering) (children playing) What happened to our community was an extension of the Asian experience in America.

(camera clicking) The anti-Asian laws were passed way back, and anti-miscegenation kinds of laws and laws against Asians owning land, and then rounding up 110,000 Japanese American citizens and placing them in concentration camps, and then ultimately, th cultural genocide of tearing dow J-Town so they could build their monument to themselves in the way of a convention cente (camera clicking) Where I grew up and all those things are no longer there, and what I cherish and love were taken away.

I don't know that I'm at peace with all of what had occurred to J-town.

I don't know that I ever will.

(construction screeching) (jack hammer rattling) The only remnants of J-town are the Japanese Church of Chris and Salt Lake Buddhist Temple.

Nothing else remains.

And for the past 60 years, these two buildings have been the heart of our community.

This street, where I grew up, is the only place left where we can still gather.

It's the only place left where we can still hold our Obon Festival, which we've been doing for over 80 years.

(camera rolling) Now the churches are caught in the crossfire of new development proposals.

What that means to the two remaining vestiges of J-town is up in the air.

It's 1964 all over again.

(camera rolling) This is all we have left.

And the end of the two churches would mark the end of Salt Lake's Japanese community.

But I see a new generation of Japanese Americans.

(bright piano chords) My hope is that they will have the drive and the commitment to rebuilding J-town.

I see them organizing, mobilizin doing more than I certainly ever did.

It gives me hope that my experiences and memories contribute to a brighter, better future for Japan Town.

("Sukiyaki" by Kyu Sakamoto) Is there value in a memory?

Is there value in a single voice I don't know, but I like to believe there is.

("Sukiyaki" by Kyu Sakamoto continues) The J-town I grew up in is gone.

It'll never be the same.

But we are still here and we are still dancing.

("Sukiyaki" by Kyu Sakamoto continues)