ALUMNI IN ACTION
Kogura Gifts: A Family Legacy Built on Resilience
By Julia Halprin Jackson
ALUMNI IN ACTION
Kogura Gifts: A Family Legacy Built on Resilience
By Julia Halprin Jackson
While the Spartan mascot celebrates 100 years, a nearby family business approaches its centennial. The Kogura Gifts shop, established in 1928 in San José’s Japantown, has survived many things, including Executive Order 9066 and the COVID-19 pandemic, and it’s still thriving. Generations of Spartans have contributed to the store’s success.
As a child growing up in San José, Robert Kumamoto remembers washing windows and sweeping floors at Kogura Gifts, a shop on Jackson Street originally owned by his grandfather Kohei Kogura and staffed by members of his extended family. First established in 1928, Kogura Gifts sold radios, sewing machines, imported Japanese magazines, newspapers and goods.
The store was always “more than just a business,” says Kumamoto, ’70 Social Science, ’75 MA Education, professor emeritus of history at San José State. Gesturing around the shop almost a century after his grandfather first signed a lease on the property, Kumamoto explains that the store serves as one of Japantown’s anchors — a reminder that even when products and services change, the store’s core function remains: promoting an inclusive community.
“This is the place where folks would come, and sometimes still come, to meet family during the Obon Festival,” he remembers, referencing the annual Japanese Buddhist summer celebration. “Family members would meet here to change their clothes [to dance]. What makes this store different from others like it is our legacy; we were established before the war.”
What Kumamoto doesn’t say, his cousin Richard Kogura does: They are still here. Many families like the Koguras were impacted by the California Alien Land Law of 1913, an act passed during a wave of anti-Asian hysteria that forbade the purchase or lease of land by “aliens ineligible for citizenship.” However, San José’s Japantown was unique in that local entrepreneurs and lawyers assisted families like the Koguras to secure property.
“I think the reason we have a Japantown today is because there was personal ownership of property,” says Kogura, who grew up down the street. “We weren’t renters. A local lawyer named J.B. Peckham helped guide immigrants to purchase property [before World War II] because there were laws prohibiting immigrants from owning land. Sometimes he’d purchase property in the name of their children, or even purchase it in his name and wait until their children turned 18, at which point he’d transfer the title. Mr. Peckham’s management of Japanese-owned property during internment allowed for a gathering and rebirth of San José’s Japantown.”
Professor Emeritus of History Robert Kumamoto grew up in the Kogura Gifts shop. Photo by Jim Gensheimer.
The shop's original owner, Kohei Kogura, helps customers in 1945. Photo courtesy of Richard Kogura.
Richard Kogura (center), his son Jimi Kogura (left) and sister Carolyn Kogura (right) are still active in the family business, generations later. Photo by Jim Gensheimer.
“This store enabled our parents to fund our education. After funding my own children’s education, I can see what an accomplishment that is.”
— Richard Kogura
When Executive Order 9066 forced the Kogura family to leave their home in 1942, they were processed at San José State’s Men’s Gymnasium (now known as Yoshihiro Uchida Hall) before being sent to Gila River War Relocation Center. They were among the 120,000 people of Japanese descent sent to incarceration camps across the country during World War II, and were not allowed to return to San José until 1945.
But the store survived, thanks in part to Peckham’s efforts — which included renting the Kogura storefront to others — allowing generations of the family to pursue higher education, many of them at San José State.
“This store enabled our parents to fund our education,” says Richard Kogura. “After funding my own children’s education, I can see what an accomplishment that is.”
Kumamoto watched his father, uncle and grandfather expand the business throughout his childhood and early adulthood, and later became an educator, attending San José State during the height of the Civil Rights movement. Not long after the 1968 Olympics, when Spartans Tommie Smith, ’69 Social Science, ’05 Honorary Doctorate, and John Carlos, ’05 Honorary Doctorate, lifted their gloved hands on the podium in an iconic civil rights salute, Kumamoto was recruited by former Spartan football player Cass Jackson, ’64 Kinesiology, as the assistant football coach at Oberlin College in Ohio alongside Smith, who coached track and field.
The Venn diagram of legendary Spartans didn’t stop there. Kumamoto later returned to California to teach social studies at San José High School before pursuing his doctorate in history at UCLA. He joined the History Department at San José State in 1984, and dedicated nearly 30 years to teaching American history and collaborating with teacher preparation programs to train generations of educators.
Members of the Kogura family at the Obon Festival in Japantown, San José. Top row, left to right: Adelaine "Lainey" Bachmeier Kogura; Cindy Kogura, Richard Kogura, Carolyn Kogura, Tracie Kogura. Second row, left to right: Julie Kogura, the late Toshiko Kogura, and family friend Marlese. Their fans read "Patty Kogura" in honor of Richard's late sister Patricia, who had passed away prior to the festival. Photo courtesy of Richard Kogura.
As San José State students, alumni, faculty and staff rallied for social justice during the Civil Rights movement and beyond, the Kogura Gifts shop remained a Japantown constant. It was a homing beacon, a place for people to gather as Japantown became a base for activism — with many visitors to the store encountering Richard’s mother and family matriarch Toshiko (“Tee”) Kogura, who passed away at age 99 in 2024, just three years after she retired from working in the store.
While many survivors of World War II incarceration camps, including Toshiko, were not ready (or unable) to share the trauma they endured, their descendants realized that the community needed an infrastructure in place to support the most vulnerable. This included a movement of Japanese American activists enrolled at San José State who advocated for secure housing and social services for their neighbors.
Nearly a century after Kohei Kogura made California home, his store remains a fixture on Jackson Street. He couldn’t have predicted that two generations later, his grandchildren Carolyn and Richard Kogura and their families operate the store, remaining true to a shared vision: An unshakable belief in the power of community to uplift others, in spite of and perhaps due to the adversity they faced.
Today, Richard delights in the curios and trinkets that make their store unique.
Hidden behind rows of ceramic maneki (Japanese beckoning cats) and tanuki (Japanese racoon dogs) is a replica of a 1935 radio, the kind that was sold in Kogura Gifts a century ago. The dials crackle to life. Like the store, the radio is equal parts past, present and future. When Richard fiddles with the knobs, listening for a signature click, his smile is radiant.
“It still works,” he says. “I knew it.”
Jimi Kogura offers a brief introduction to Kogura Gifts in this small business spotlight video produced by the San José Office of Economic Development.
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Top image: The first few generations of the Kogura-Yamatoda family in front of the original Koguras Gifts shop sign in 1936. Top row, left to right: Kohei Kogura, Tadao Kogura, Hatsuyo Kogura (Yamatoda), Kazuko Kogura (Kumamoto), Hanako Yamatoda (Okamura), James Kogura, Shigeru Yamatoda, Tsutomo Akizuki, Matsuko Yamatoda (Murata), Ohata Yamatoda (Iwamuro), Jane Yamatoda (Yamanaka), held by Yoshiko Akizuki (Yamatoda).
Front row: Bernice Akizuki (Nakagawa), Chiyeko Kogura (Takeda), Akiko Kogura (Yoshioka) and Edward Akizuki.
Photo courtesy of Richard Kogura, who adds that "there are three generations pictured in this photo. Although the children identify themselves as Nisei (second generation), they were fortunate to have Ohata Yamatoda, their Bachan (Grandma) living with them. Kohei Kogura was born in Wakayama, Japan and his wife, Hatsuyo was born in Hawaii."
Want to learn more?
Top image: The first few generations of the Kogura-Yamatoda family in front of the original Koguras Gifts shop sign in 1936. Top row, left to right: Kohei Kogura, Tadao Kogura, Hatsuyo Kogura (Yamatoda), Kazuko Kogura (Kumamoto), Hanako Yamatoda (Okamura), James Kogura, Shigeru Yamatoda, Tsutomo Akizuki, Matsuko Yamatoda (Murata), Ohata Yamatoda (Iwamuro), Jane Yamatoda (Yamanaka), held by Yoshiko Akizuki (Yamatoda).
Front row: Bernice Akizuki (Nakagawa), Chiyeko Kogura (Takeda), Akiko Kogura (Yoshioka) and Edward Akizuki.
Photo courtesy of Richard Kogura, who adds that "there are three generations pictured in this photo. Although the children identify themselves as Nisei (second generation), they were fortunate to have Ohata Yamatoda, their Bachan (Grandma) living with them. Kohei Kogura was born in Wakayama, Japan and his wife, Hatsuyo was born in Hawaii."
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