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From W.B.E.Z.

Hey, I'm Catherine Nagasawa.

When Irene Brown was a kid in the 90s, her family used to take trips to Chicago's Japan town.

At least, that's what her mom used to call it. It was a cluster

of Japanese restaurants and businesses on the north side in the Lakeview neighborhood near

Belmont and Clark Streets. If you wanted to buy rice noodles, you couldn't just go into any store

or order it on Amazon. You had to actually go to the Japanese neighborhood.

At its peak in the 70s, there were around 150 Japanese-American-owned establishments in the area.

And right in the middle was the Nise Lounge Bar near Clark and Sheffield.

It was named after the Nise, or second-generation Japanese Americans, who lived in the neighborhood.

The Nisei Lounge is still there, but Irene says nearly all of the other Japanese shops and restaurants she remembers are gone.

Chicago has so many ethnic enclaves.

It has Greek town.

It has Chinatown.

What happened to that Japanese community?

And where did they go?

The reason the Lakeview neighborhood disappeared is complicated.

And part of it has to do with how Japanese Americans got to Chicago in the first place.

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