A school of bluefin tuna now swims across the pavement at Sixth and Mesa streets in San Pedro, part of a new street art installation called “Furusato: Home Sweet Home” that honors the Japanese American fishermen who once worked the city's waterfront. The crosswalk, unveiled last month, was designed by artist Lua Kobayashi, whose own family ties to San Pedro's fishing industry run generations deep.
The project was completed at the intersection and formally unveiled at a Sept. 3 ceremony hosted by the San Pedro Waterfront Arts District, according to Rafu Shimpo. The outlet reports the school of bluefin tuna depicted in the design recalls the history of the Japanese American fishing community that once thrived in the area. Kobayashi, whom CBS News Los Angeles describes as a 28-year-old Uruguayan, Japanese and American artist, created the street art specifically to honor San Pedro's Japanese fishermen of the early 1900s, with reporter Rina Nakano covering the story for the station.
For Kobayashi, the project is personal. One of her great-grandfathers immigrated from Japan and worked as a fish peddler in San Pedro, per Rafu Shimpo's reporting, and “Furusato” marks her first public art project. The title itself carries weight: as Daily Breeze notes, “Furusato” literally translates to “hometown” or “birthplace” in Japanese.
A Design Rooted in Tradition and Family History
The crosswalk's imagery draws from more than just family memory. According to Live South Bay, the design was inspired by the traditional Japanese art of gyotaku — a centuries-old printmaking technique using fish — alongside Kobayashi's own family history. Kobayashi describes her broader practice on the San Pedro Waterfront Arts District's website as multidisciplinary, spanning photography, video and installation work.
Bringing the design to the street required specialized work. The same Rafu Shimpo report notes that Wellington Signs installed the artwork using an intricate system of stencils and specialized traffic-grade paint, translating Kobayashi's design into a durable public installation at the busy intersection.
Funding and the Arts District Behind the Project
The crosswalk came together with $39,000 in grant funding from the Port of Los Angeles and Arts United Coalition, according to the Daily Breeze. The San Pedro Waterfront Arts District sponsored and oversaw the project from start to finish, the outlet reported. San Pedro's standing as an arts hub is not new — the city was designated one of California's first 14 cultural districts back in 2017, per Rafu Shimpo.
Remembering Terminal Island's Vanished Community
The mural's subject matter points back to a community that was forcibly dismantled. Rafu Shimpo reports that in 1942, Japanese American residents of Terminal Island were forced to leave during the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans. The National Park Service's documentation of that period notes that even before Executive Order 9066 was signed, the U.S. Navy announced on Feb. 14, 1942, that all people of Japanese ancestry had to leave Terminal Island by March 14.
Terminal Island had once been a center of the region's commercial fishing industry, home to 16 fish canneries during its heyday, the Daily Breeze reported. Today, only two buildings from that historic Japanese fishing village remain standing, both owned by the Port of Los Angeles, according to the Los Angeles Times. The Times reports that the Terminal Islanders club is working with the Los Angeles Conservancy and the National Trust for Historic Preservation to seek historic designation for what little physical history remains.
Against that backdrop, Kobayashi's crosswalk offers a different kind of preservation — one painted into the street itself rather than confined to a shrinking set of historic buildings. The tuna swimming across Sixth and Mesa streets stand as a visible, everyday reminder of a community that was uprooted, even as the physical traces of its history continue to disappear from Terminal Island.
