Tokyo Restaurant
(The "race" angle.)
This is an old photo found in an envelope in a pile of papers.
It's Tahei's restaurant, in Portsmouth, VA, circa 1930 or so.
He enlisted in the Navy shortly after arriving in the US, and was
made to cook food, because they wouldn't give him a rifle, due to his
race. After his contract was up, he stayed around the base and
operated a restaurant. If you look carefully, the signage says
servicemen were welcome.
The restuarant was located in an area called Newtown, which was the
poor part of Portsmouth. It was a segregated town, and perhaps
because of
his status, he operated it in the white part of the poor part of
town.
Being in the South, they served up more than Japanese food. They
also sold Chow Mein, Chop Suey (a fake Chinese dish), and Yock-O-Mein
(an oriental noodle soup served in the American South). Taro
always had a fondness for deep fried Egg Foo Yong, which they also sold
there. The sign says they also sold Philip Morris cigarettes
there, being Virginia and all.
The Newtown area was demolished in the late 1970s as part of an urban
renewal project. (The area had been desegregated, and due to
white flight, had become the Black part of town.) The area was
still empty when I visited it in 1994. The streets were still
there, but only the building foundations remained, the vacant lots
grown green with grass and weeds.
(Large version.)
Newtown on Google Maps
Taro Kawakami photo from the WWHS 1941 yearbook.
Hatsuko Kawakami (Crumet) from the WWHS 1938 yearbook.