JANM’s Pavilion is closed for renovation and will reopen in late 2026. While the museum and store are closed, join us for programs and events on our Little Tokyo campus, throughout Southern California, and beyond.
Current Exhibition
Explore the world of cars and trucks as powerful vehicles for personal expression, collective identity, and social mobility. Read stories and watch videos that share stories related to the exhibition. Check back as we add more content throughout the run of the exhibition (July 31 through November 12, 2025).
Oliver Wang shares the inspiration behind the exhibition and how he came to be its curator.
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Japanese America podcast team Koji and Michelle ride through the heart of Southern California’s Japanese American car culture with Dr. Oliver Wang, curator of the Cruising J-Town exhibition.
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Melanie Morimoto shares how her work as a car upholsterer builds on a family legacy started by her grandparents and continued by her father.
Janet Fujimoto shares her experiences as one of few women racing in the Nikkei car scenes in the late 1970s, winning awards on the car show circuit, and sharing her love of cars with her family.
The grandson of drag racer Sush Matsubara retells the stories of growing up in the legacy of classic and modified cars. Today, almost 20 years after Sush’s passing, Dane is restoring the first Mondello-Matsubara Fiat to its former glory.
Oliver Wang remembers the late Tom Matano, recalling his interview with Tom about his career, anti-Japanese sentiments in the auto-industry, and creating his iconic design for the original Mazda Miata.
“Never race the Japanese guy with the lawnmower in the back,” warned L.A.’s street racers about gardener Yoshio Shimazu and his work truck, a Ford F-100 with a HEMI engine. Learn about the gardening truck featured in the Cruising J-Town exhibition.
John Kuramoto was a quarter-midget champion racer. Jimmie Yamane won the world’s first international go-karting championship. Learn how they and other Southern California Nikkei became some of the greatest racers of tiny cars in the world.
The story of custom car parts brand Mooneyes is one of multiple generations, continents, and, of course, cars! Follow the brand from inception to expansion.
Award-winning author Naomi Hirahara writes about how her brother Jimmy created a diorama of their father Sam’s gardening van, a white Ford Econoline, currently on display in the Cruising J-Town exhibition in Pasadena.
Street racing legend Nobu Oshiro’s need for speed forced him out of Hawai‘i to California, where he not only raced cars but also souped them up.
One day in 1940, an 18-year-old George Nakamura stumbled across a unique car for sale. The car even had a futuristic name: The Meteor. In the wake of EO 9066, and having just 72 hours to pack what they could carry before reporting to the Santa Anita Assembly Center, the car ended up being stored by a friend for over 60 years.
On August 8, 1915, “The World’s First Japanese Auto Race” was organized by the American-Japanese Automobile Association (AAJA). Learn about how Fred Jiro Fujioka, manager of the AAJA and “the most influential Nikkei car figure in the early 20th century,” organized the event in Los Angeles.
While the fate of people’s automobiles paled in comparison to the larger tolls exacted on the Japanese American community during the WWII incarceration era, it is striking how various parties took interest in the cars that Nikkei households were forced to leave behind.
When Art Kudo took a chance and opened a Toyota dealership in the 1960s, nobody could have imagined it becoming the Nikkei hub it’s remembered as now.
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This 1931 Chevrolet Special Sedan’s role in history was defined by Executive Order 9066. The car moved the Marumoto family from Gardena, California, to West Point, Utah to avoid incarceration in America’s concentration camps. Read about their journey and some unexpected kindnesses.
The history of Japanese Americans in Los Angeles car culture dates back at least as early as the 1910s when Fred Fujioka teamed up with George Kawamoto to found F&K Garage in Little Tokyo.
If you arrived after dark to the Nisei Week carnival back in the 1980s, you likely would have encountered the following scene: a seemingly endless parade of cars, trucks, and motorcycles circling the streets, blaring music, revving engines, burning rubber.
One summer in the early 1950s, a small group of young Nikkei women from the Sawtelle neighborhood of West Los Angeles squeezed into a Chevy Bel Air. They were bound for Northern California and as part of their planning, the group picked one route in particular.
Who is the US Navy veteran getting out of his car in 1942 at the Santa Anita temporary detention center, incarcerated by his own government? Follow Cruising J-town curator Oliver Wang’s journey to put a name to a face and recover the identity of Hikotaro Yamada.
The Los Angeles Japanese Fish Peddlers Association, formed in the early 1960s by Nikkei fish truck operators delivered fresh seafood, mochi, rice, tofu, candies, and other Japanese treats to the doors of Nikkei families across the Southland.
On August 21, 2021, veterans of the Nisei Week cruises and organizers of the Showoff discussed the history and legacy of nikkei car culture in Los Angeles in a conversation moderated by Oliver Wang with Janet Fujimoto, Tod Kaneko, Brian Karasawa, and Ken Miyoshi.
