A new nonprofit museum is opening its doors this week inside a 1945 house on Garrett Avenue in Chula Vista, launching with an exhibition on Japanese American vegetable farmers who were forced from their land and sent to internment camps during World War II. The Chula Vista Museum and History Center will unveil its inaugural show, titled The Chula Vista Japanese American Story, on Friday, September 18.
The exhibition includes photos, historical accounts and archival newspaper clips documenting the displacement of the farmers, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune. Those families were sent to internment camps across Arizona and California, per the same report. It's a story rooted in decades of South Bay agricultural history, including the two Japanese immigrants, Yamamoto Mitsusaburo and Muraoka Fukutaro, who introduced winter celery to Chula Vista in 1912 and helped build an industry that earned the region the nickname “Celery Capital of the World,” according to the San Diego History Center.
A Grassroots Effort Years in the Making
The push to build the museum began in early 2025, when local residents started meeting to figure out how to establish it, the Union-Tribune reports. The museum received its nonprofit designation in October 2025 and operates in a commercial zone without any official partnership with the city, according to the same account. Patricia Aguilar, who serves as president of the museum's nine-member board and spent eight years on the Chula Vista City Council, told the paper the museum aims to give “residents, visitors and students” a place to learn the city's history. Aguilar added that the effort is still at an early stage, saying the museum is at the ground level of trying to start.
The museum's mission is to preserve and showcase what organizers describe as the diverse and distinctive history of Chula Vista, per the Union-Tribune's reporting. Former Chula Vista mayor Greg Cox, who held office from 1981 to 1990, donated artifacts from his time in office, and resident Steve Wood also contributed items to the collection. City council members have voiced support for the museum, though it operates independently of city government. The Chula Vista Heritage Museum operates through the city library.
One Exhibit at a Time, With Big Ambitions
Unlike the Heritage Museum's rotating displays inside the Civic Center Branch on Third Avenue, the new center will show just one exhibition at a time, keeping the Japanese American Story on view for six months, per the Union-Tribune. The museum also plans to take mobile displays out to community festivals, including the Lemon Festival and the Starlight Parade, the paper reports.
Earl Jentz, a volunteer who arrived in Chula Vista in 1976, told the Union-Tribune that this is not the first time this has been done — a nod to the community's long history of trying to preserve its own story. One of the photographs on display shows a rail line that was washed away during the Great Flood of 1916, when the Sweetwater Dam broke and floodwaters swept 12 miles through the South Bay from inland out to the sea, according to the same report.
The Weight of History Behind the Exhibit
The choice to open with a Japanese American story carries deep historical resonance in Chula Vista. In 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6–3 that California's discriminatory treatment of Fred Oyama was unconstitutional, after California tried to seize eight acres of Chula Vista farmland consisting of two adjoining parcels that Japanese immigrant Kajiro Oyama had purchased in 1934 in the name of his U.S.-born son, Fred, as detailed by LA Local. The case highlights the impact of California's Alien Land Law on Chula Vista farmland.
During World War II, Japanese Americans were forcibly relocated, according to the Japanese American National Museum. That legacy has already been marked locally: the Chula Vista Elementary School District named its 46th campus Saburo Muraoka Elementary School in May 2016, honoring a Japanese American farmer who arrived in 1915, lost his farm during internment and returned after the war to rebuild his business and community, according to Rafu Shimpo.
Visiting the New Museum
The Chula Vista Museum and History Center is located at 261 Garrett Avenue and offers free admission. Opening weekend hours run Friday, September 18, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. and Saturday from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., per the Union-Tribune. Normal hours afterward are Friday from 1 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 3 p.m., with visits also available by appointment. More information is available at cv-museum.com or by calling 619-316-2642.
The museum's debut arrives as Chula Vista continues to grow into its role as San Diego County's second-largest city. The city is also building a new library on its eastern side, per the Union-Tribune, even as this small house on Garrett Avenue takes on the task of telling the fuller story of how Chula Vista came to be.
