Little Tokyo Community Profiles
Discover Nikkei partnered with Professor Morgan Pitelka of Occidental College and his students taking the Spring 2009 seminar “Japanophilia: Orientalism, Nationalism, Transnationalism” on a meaningful community-based documentation project. The students interviewed owners of five long-time Little Tokyo businesses to create Nikkei Album collections and articles.
Stories from this series
Engaging the Community: Occidental College’s 2009 Partnership with Discover Nikkei
June 23, 2009 • Morgan Pitelka
This spring, ten students in the Occidental College Asian Studies seminar “Japanophilia” had the opportunity to get to know some of the business leaders of the Japanese American community in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles. The seminar is unusual, looking at the historical connection between Japanese self-identity and Western fascination with Japanese culture, while also considering the complex interconnections among race, gender, power, and identity around similar issues in the U.S. today. One of my goals as the instructor of the …
Keeping Little Tokyo Safe: Satoru Uyeda's Volunteer Spirit
June 16, 2009 • Guilberto Moran
The connection between Japanese Americans and World War II is an important one to understand for all Americans. With one piece of legislation—Executive Order 9066—thousands of Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans were sent to several internment camps dotting the country. One of these was the Manzanar internment camp located in California’s Owens Valley. It was here that the Uyeda family was forced to relocate to and it was here that Satoru was born. Following the end of World War II …
Bunkado Gifts and Music: The Story of an Artist and His Legacy
June 9, 2009 • Ava Mikolavich
Customers and clients call the Bunkado curio store in Los Angeles “the retro store” because of its constancy and enduring commitment to the Japanese arts and crafts. Tokio and Suye Ueyama started Bunkado, which means “house of culture” in Japanese, in 1945. Their niece, Irene Tsukuda-Germain, now runs the store in memory of her uncle and his original vision for the store as an artist’s Mecca. While the store has endured through several generations and cultural epochs, its inception was …
Traditional Food in a Changing City
June 2, 2009 • Angelica Jardini
Aoi Restaurant sits in the heart of historic Little Tokyo, on 1st Street in downtown Los Angeles. Half a block away from the Japanese American National Museum, Aoi is one of many restaurants, sweet shops, and cafes that line the main artery of Little Tokyo and attract people of all backgrounds to the thoroughfare. Established in 1976 by Hiroko Yamagata and her sister Grace Maruyama, immigrants from Hiroshima, Aoi is arguably the most historic of Little Tokyo's restaurants, and well-respected …
A Pillar of Little Tokyo: Uyeda Department Store
May 12, 2009 • Alexander Kaplan-Reyes
Little Tokyo is a community in constant flux, as Korean merchants move into the area and as new projects, like metro rails, cut through it. One of its constants, however, is the Uyeda Department Store, a small store that sells Japanese ethnic goods like kimonos, paper umbrellas, paper fans, and geta. It is located at 230 East 1st Street in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles. Founded in 1945 by the father of its current owner, the store, otherwise known as S.K. …
Bunkado and the Tsukada Family Pull
May 5, 2009 • Caitlin Anderson
Irene Tsukuda-Germain grew up with Bunkado, a family business opened in 1945 by her aunt and uncle, Suye and Tokio Ueyama. Her parents moved to Little Tokyo to run their own store, the Tsukada Company, but when it closed due to development in the area, the family then helped to run the Bunkado store. Irene recalls coming to the store after the school day at Maryknoll, a Japanese Catholic school a few blocks away, which many children within her community …
