Japantown - Nihonmachi to its residents - spread over 40 city blocks of San Francisco in the 1950s. Urban renewal in the 1960s moved many residents and merchants to the suburbs, but Nihomachi survived and began to resist this " second evacuation  4;. In 2006 an investment group from southern California bought up most of the business properties. This video by Adrianne Anderson and Tony Sondag looks at the history of San Francisco’s Nihomachi and its continuing struggle to survive. Urban Voic e.