1942-1945
Community members spent nearly six months living in converted horse stalls at the Tanforan Assembly Center in California before being transferred by train to the desolate Topaz War Relocation Center in Utah, where they lived under armed guard behind barbed wire for three years.
1948
The Buchanan YMCA played a major civic role by hosting the historic first meetings of a multiracial coalition of Western Addition residents who organized to fight city redevelopment plans that threatened to displace the neighborhood.
december 1945
As military operations wound down, the USO ended its programming at the site. This prompted a formal review by the YMCA Board of Directors to determine how the building could be refitted to welcome back its original Japanese American members.
1947
Programs were now operated under the newly named Buchanan YMCA. Fred Hoshiyama was called to the Buchanan YMCA to work with the community, along with African American program director Harry Payne, to launch an interracial program between African Americans and Japanese Americans that served the needs of young people in the neighborhood.
