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    Santa Ana unveils monument apologizing for destruction of early Chinatown
    • May 24, 2026

    A memorial was unveiled Saturday to forever mark a neighborhood that was lost some 120 years ago.

    In 1906, city leaders ordered that Santa Ana’s Chinatown be burned down, at the time saying it was a health emergency, but they were masking an urban renewal effort to build a new City Hall. It is an action that the city’s modern-day leaders have sought to “atone for the racist and xenophobic actions” of those decades ago.

    In 2022, City Council members signed a resolution apologizing, and on Saturday, they dedicated the monument installed where the Chinatown neighborhood once bustled near 3rd and Bush streets.

    Along with a map of what was once Chinatown and an engraved scene of part of the community, it shares the story of the more than 800 Chinese residents who made homes and built businesses in the area.

    “These residents were key to building our nation’s infrastructure and, despite considerable discrimination against them, were thriving by the late 1860s,” the memorial’s plaque says. “Santa Ana Chinatown once included homes, drugstores, curio shops, two washhouses, and a shared vegetable garden with a barn. Chinatown was a community.”

    Members of the city’s Chinatown Apology and Memorial Committee and descendants of families who lived in the community participated in Saturday’s dedication.

     Orange County Register 

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