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Harada House

The Harada House is a historic house located on 3356 Lemon Street in Riverside, California. The house, created in 1884 and built upon by the Harada family, was the focus of a critical application of the California Alien Land Law of 1913, which prevented foreigners who were ineligible for citizenship from owning property. The state of California attempted to seize the property from the family in California v. Harada, but the Haradas ultimately won the case and retained ownership of the house. The house was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1990 and is currently overseen by the Riverside Metropolitan Museum.

Description

The Harada House is located near downtown Riverside, on the east side of Lemon Street between 3rd and 4th Streets. The house was built in 1884 as a single-story saltbox cottage with recessed shiplap wood siding and a wood shingle roof. The Haradas made a large improvement to the property in 1916 with the addition of a second story, complete with "four bedrooms, a bathroom, and an open front porch." It now stands as an unassuming, two-story frame structure with shiplap siding on its exterior. It is fronted by a two-story porch supported by heavy posts, with the second floor of the porch being enclosed. The original four square chamfered porch support posts have been exchanged with simple heavy posts and the original windows were redecorated by extending their frames. Due to the alterations of the house being used as evidence in the case of California v. Harada, its historical integrity and a majority of its features such as its wallpaper, fixtures, and overall structural design have been preserved.

History

Family

During the early 1900s, Jukichi Harada emigrated from his native home of Japan alongside his wife, Ken, and their firstborn son, Masa Atsu. The Harada family settled in Riverside, California by leasing a boarding house as well as operating a restaurant, and they had three more children, Mine, Sumi, and Yoshizo, during this time. In 1913, the Harada family suffered the loss of their five-year-old son, Tadao, due to the bacterial infection diphtheria caused by their current confined living situation. Jukichi Harada then began searching for a new home that was close to the family's church and his children's school.

California v. Harada

The house was purchased in 1915 by Jukichi Harada in a transaction that formally placed ownership of the house in the hands of his three minor children, who were natural-born United States citizens. This was because Harada and his wife Ken were immigrants from Japan, and were prevented from owning property in California by the California Alien Land Law of 1913. After the purchase, neighboring property owners attempted to drive the Haradas out of the property, without success. State authorities then filed suit against the children (the named owners of the property) to bring it into state ownership in October of 1916, and the hearings for the case of California v. Harada began in December of 1916.

At issue in the case was the right of the American-born Japanese children of Japanese immigrants to own the house, with the case serving as an early constitutional test of the alien land law. During the hearings, the case drew international attention, as the current relations and Gentlemen's Agreement between the U.S. and Japan put a lot of eyes on the trial. The hearings ended in September of 1918, with Judge Hugh Craig upholding the right of the children to own the house. Judge Craig stated that, as American citizens, the Harada children had the right to own property regardless of their race, and the state chose not to appeal this decision.

Despite the Haradas being allowed to keep the property, the principle of legislation preventing land ownership by aliens was also confirmed. This set the stage for further legal challenges, as foreigners ineligible for citizenship were still unable to own property.

Preservation

During World War II, the Haradas were among those sent to Japanese internment camps, where both Ken and Jukichi Harada died. During their internment, a Caucasian friend of the family occupied the house, and the family was able to retain ownership. In the years after the war, Sumi Harada, one of the three children, took over the house and boarded other Japanese families who had lost their homes. It is during this period that the upstairs porch was enclosed to provide more living space.

Beginning in the 1970s, Mark Rawitsch, a graduate student from the University of California, begun researching the Harada house. Working alongside Sumi Harada, who was able to preserve a vast quantity of family records, the two were able to prove the house's significance to the City of Riverside, and the house became an official landmark in 1977. It was not until 2004, four years after Sumi Harada died and ownership passed to her brother Harold, that their house was given to the Riverside Metropolitan Museum.

Restoration

In November of 2016, the American Alliance of Museums notified the Riverside Metropolitan Museum in a reaccreditation letter of the need to come together “to see measurable plans and evidence of concrete steps taken to address the urgent need to stabilize, then conserve, then open the Harada House.” A comprehensive structural engineering assessment shall be performed to understand the house’s full condition. There are more structural issues that have to be dealt with to fully stabilize it, even though the house has had previous structural work. Overall, the Harada House needs dismantling to understand its original structure and condition, then a full plan of procedures to fully restore the house can be developed.

Through the process of restoration, the house is currently being made into a cultural and educational site by the Riverside Metropolitan Museum. To create an interpretive center for the site, the museum raised money through donations to purchase a neighboring house, referred to as the Robinson House.

• 
  National Historic Landmark plaque in front of the Harada House.
• 
  Riverside Cultural Heritage Board plaque in front of the Harada House.

See also

• Alien land laws
• List of National Historic Landmarks in California
• National Register of Historic Places listings in Riverside County, California

References

• Klotz, Esther H.; Hall, Joan H. (1985). Adobes, Bungalows, and Mansions of Riverside, California (1st ed.). Riverside, CA: Riverside Museum Press. p. 335. ISBN 0-935661-11-5. OCLC 13043980.
• Rawitsch, Mark Howland (2012). The House on Lemon Street: Japanese Pioneers and the American Dream. Boulder, CO: University of Colorado Press. p. 388. ISBN 978-1607321651. OCLC 769429702. OCLC 823715335

Further reading

• Rawitsch, Mark Howland (1983). No Other Place: Japanese American Pioneers in a Southern California Neighborhood. Riverside, CA: University of California, Riverside Department of History. p. 124. OCLC 10100652.
  • Reviewed in: Taylor, Sandra C. (Winter 1986). "No Other Place". The Public Historian. 8 (11): 111–112. doi:10.2307/3377093. ISSN 0272-3433. JSTOR 3377093. OCLC 4896688058.

External links

• Riverside Metropolitan Museum, Harada House
• University of California, Riverside; Asian American Riverside; The Harada House
• National Park Service; National Historic Landmarks Program; Harada House
• U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Harada House