When did the Bay Area become very Asian? (San Jose, San Francisco: how much, hotels)

[soldierlifter]

I understand Asians go way back in San Francisco even having their own titled neighborhoods but what about the rest of the Bay? Last time I was there I noticed it looked almost Asian. Fremont, Sunnyvale, Cupertino. Really everywhere. My question is was it always like that or is that new immigration? If not what ethic group was there before white? black? hispanic? Just trying learn from all the CA historians out there!

[509]

I lived in the Bay Area in the 60's and there were many more Asians than Latino's at that time. Particularly at the schools, I was in my teens at the time.

I would not be surprised if there were more Asians than blacks at that time.

[Ruth4Truth]

Tech development. It happened when the tech companies located in the area and needed an overabundance of skilled workers. Fremont. Sunnyvale, Cupertino were white before then, with some East Asians. Now, South Asians outnumber East Asians, pretty much.

How far back in history do you want to go? Before statehood, the Bay Area was part of Mexico, so it was Hispanic, obviously, but it was sparsely populated by Hispanics. It was mostly Native American. Fremont, etc. didn't exist back then. The first towns to be created as Anglos began to move in in significant numbers were Vallejo and Benicia, created from property General Mariano Vallejo sold off. Before that, those areas were used for farming and cattle and sheep ranching by people with large land grants.

Most of the Bay Area before the Anglo influx was Native American, as was nearly the entire state. Spain and Mexico didn't try to exterminate Native people, the way the Anglos did. They tried to convert them to Christianity and use them for labor, with mixed results.

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by 509

I lived in the Bay Area in the 60's and there were many more Asians than Latino's at that time. Particularly at the schools, I was in my teens at the time.

I would not be surprised if there were more Asians than blacks at that time.

There was a huge influx of Blacks into the Bay Area, especially during WWII, that continued through the 60's. 300,000 Blacks moved to the Bay Area for jobs and to escape oppression in the South during WWII and in the following two and a half decades, roughly. This was after an initial influx of about 20,000 between 1910 and 1940. A few had arrived during the Gold Rush.

By 1940, Blacks in Oakland outnumbered all other races combined, except Whites, at around 8000+. By 1960, their numbers had grown to over ten times that, far outnumbering Asians. And the WWII influx hadn't yet begun by the 1940 census.

1960 Census (Oakland)

TOTAL POPULATION 367,548 100.0%
In households 360,453 98.1%

In group quarters 7,095 1.9%

RACE

White 270,523 73.6%
Negro 83,618 22.8%
Other races 565 0.2%
Indian 1,166 0.3%
Japanese 2,206 0.6%
Chinese 7,658 2.1%
Filipino 1,812

By 1960, Blacks in Berkeley were 1/4 of the total population. Asians were about 1% of the total. In Richmond, the Asian presence was about 2% of the total, while Blacks were 20%.

In the South Bay in 1960, Asians (Japanese, Chinese, Filipinos) numbered in the low hundreds in each town, while blacks numbered a dozen or two in towns from Fremont through Sunnyvale to Cupertino. Whites were the vast majority throughout the South Bay and the Peninsula.

In San Francisco County in 1960, Blacks were over 74,000, while all Asians together were around 50,000.

[Hemlock140]

I worked in Oakland from 1976-1992. I remember when there was a huge number of refugees from the Vietnam War moving into older, run down hotels. Meanwhile, the office where I worked was mostly white, but probably 30% Asian, mostly Chinese, then Hispanics, and a few Blacks. Where we lived in Castro Valley there were Asians, again mostly Chinese, but immigrants from India were just starting to move in.

When my wife and I were last in Oakland just before Covid we were amazed to see how much of the previously Black areas like Brookfield Village and Sobrante Park had apparently become Hispanic.

[joosoon]

Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth

Fremont, etc. didn't exist back then.

Pretty much this.
The three specific places mentioned are all twentieth century creations. More so, they don't represent a very big swathe of the state population even in their modern forms. It's hard to answer a question about something being "very Asian" without defining that term a little more thoroughly.


Since statehood though, it's always been "Asian enough" to cause a panic. Look up guys like Frederick Bee or Charles Vaincoeur Stuart for good examples of how that was received at the time.

[Igor Blevin]

You asked "Bay Area" but here is the Asian population in San Fransisco by decade, primarily Chinese and Taiwanese. I thought the immigration of Vietnamese boat refugees after the Vietnam War would have shown up in their stats, but I don't see it. Maybe they all went to San Jose.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects...an-population/


SF's Chinatown began in 1848 drawn to the California gold rush, but most ended up working for the railroads or other low paying labor jobs. There was a large influx of Chinese form Hong Kong beginning in the 1960s.

The tech boom saw a huge influx of Asians to the south bay after the Dot.com collapse in 2000 up to 2010. Tech companies were going bust and fired higher paying Americans for lower paid asians. There was a large influx of Asians during that decade.

[ccm123]

I grew up in the Bay Area in the 60’s-70’s. We always had Asian neighbors and classmates.
At that time, most were native born here in the US, rather than having arrived as immigrants. They were mostly Chinese, Filipino and Japanese. At the time, Asian-Indian immigrants were not common.

I started seeing a noticeable amount of Asian immigrants come to the Bay Area and California in the mid-late ‘70’s. We started seeing Vietnamese (as mentioned by another poster) refugees from the war and I also noticed a lot more affluent Asian immigrants from Hong Kong and Taiwan.

I think many Korean immigrants started arriving in the mid-‘70’s (?).

I moved to Southern California in the early ‘80’s to attend college and a similar demographic change, was underway there. Asian (mostly Chinese) immigrants were settling in the San Gabriel Valley (Monterey Park, predominately) and Vietnamese immigrants were settling in Westminster and Garden Grove. Koreans were settling in Koreatown, just near Downtown LA.

I’d say that the large scale immigration started in the mid-late ‘70’s and progressed/scaled from that point. I believe the well paying jobs in Silicon Valley attracted the well educated immigrants to settle here in the Bay Area, along with the quality of higher education for their children.

Just my observations.

[sav858]

Lot of South Asians seem to have come starting in the 2000's. San Ramon and that areas used to be a lot whiter.

[Nut4sweets]

Bay Areas (affluent areas): Silicone Valley, meaning San Jose/Sunnyvale/Los Gatos/Milpitas hire mostly tech engineers (East Indians and Vietnamese). San Francisco/Oakland (hills, affluent areas) have many Chinese living there for many generations. Sausalito/Saratoga/Santa Cruz/Palo Alto have mostly white, affluent people. The rest (not so affluent areas) have mostly blacks (Oakland) and Hispanics (South San Jose, Mission Districts in San Francisco).