Photo of my grandfather’s 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 worked in food in NYC and lived in NJ. In the 30s, they moved down to VA to open 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, also called yacamein, yakamein, yakameat, old sober). 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.
The car in the photo is probably a 1935 Plymouth, so this photo is after 1934.
