J.W.A Site 

​​The Arroyo Grande Japanese Welfare Association (AGJWA) was a cultural organization that was founded by the Japanese Immigrant community that had settled there. In the early 1920s, the AGJWA leaders bought a 1.5 acre property in Arroyo Grande to be used as an educational site. There existed two houses on this land. One house was turned into a Japanese school and the other one was a home for the Japanese school teacher. This site became an area for the primary purpose of after-school education of the children of the AGJWA community.

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As the 1930s approached, Keisaku Fukuhara (Margaret Ikeda's grandfather) helped build a community hall on the same property (next to the two houses). As the war approached, the federal government began creating new regulations to limit the activities of the Japanese Americans in California, who were starting to be viewed with suspicion without cause. 

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One regulation limited the places Japanese Americans could be after dark. The lines were established based on borders such as Highway 101. Those who lived on the coastal side of Highway 101 were able to work during the day on that side, however when night came, it was now illegal for any Japanese Americans to be on that coastal side, due to an unfounded fear that the Japanese Americans could be communicating with Japan. The point of the borders was for the government to keep defining the spaces that Japanese Americans could occupy. At first, they couldn't be on the west side of Highway 1, then the boundary was moved slightly east to Highway 101.

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 The AGJWA site was on the east side of 101, and thus became a place for Japanese Americans to sleep when they weren't allowed to be at their homes on the coastal side at night. The Ikedas, a well known farming family in the Arroyo Grande community, lived on the coastal side and used the community hall frequently. The AGJWA opened this hall to others in the same position. Then the community was required to move to certain areas called “relocation centers.”, before finally being incarcerated in the Internment Camps. 

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Unfortunately, that community hall remained standing only until 2011 when an act of arson burned the structure to the ground.