When Disney Wanted to Build a Parking Lot on Their Berry Farm, the Fujishiges Said No
The H&M Fujishige Farm was established in 1953 by brothers Hiroshi and Masao Fujishige after their family's multiple displacements earlier in the century. When the brothers were born in Los Angeles in the 1920s, their Japanese parents were considered "aliens ineligible for citizenship," barred from owning land because of racist Alien Land Laws. In 1942, when the U.S. military forced Japanese Americans to evacuate the West Coast, the Fujishige family moved in with relatives in Utah. After the war, they returned to California and, in 1953 — the year after the Supreme Court finally invalidated the Alien Land Law — the Fujishige brothers bought this 58-acre berry farm for $3,500 and began growing strawberries, vegetables and herbs.
At that time, Walt Disney was looking around Anaheim for a place to plant his proposed theme park. Eventually, the Disney Corporation offered the Fujishiges $90 million to buy their land near Disneyland, but the Fujishiges refused to sell.
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High-rise hotels loomed over their fields, yet they continued to grow strawberries. The city of Anaheim tried to seize some of the land by condemning it in 1985. When Masao committed suicide in 1986, Hiroshi magnanimously told the Anaheim city council that it was not their fault, although the family also told the Los Angeles Times that the pressure to sell had contributed to Masao's pain. Expressing solidarity with other people of color who have struggled to hold on to their land across the United States, Hiroshi Fujishige told the LA Times in 1991 that he didn't want to sell too early because he "didn't want to end up like those Indians who used to own Manhattan Island."
The family continued to grow strawberries here until just before Hiroshi Fujishige's death in 1998, when, with his blessing, the family finally sold their strawberry fields. Disney was able to construct California Adventure at their former employee lot by paving over the fertile Fuijishige strawberry farm and moving employee parking here. While land dispossession and displacement are not new to the Japanese American community, this family's story provides a different framing of the ways people of color have pushed back against corporate development.
