Where to Find Remnants of Crenshaw's Japanese American History
Today, the Crenshaw district of South Los Angeles is known as a predominantly Black neighborhood, while Japanese Americans are most commonly associated with Little Tokyo, Sawtelle, Torrance and Gardena. But after World War II, Crenshaw had the largest concentration of Japanese Americans in the continental United States. People who lived in the neighborhood during the middle of the 20th century often talk about its diversity — public school photographs from that time show classes of Black, Asian, Latinx and white students all posing together, with teachers of multiple races as well.
This diversity was made possible by a 1948 Supreme Court ruling that prohibited the enforcement of racially restrictive housing covenants. Japanese Americans began to move into the previously white area, along with Black and Mexican American families. By the 1970s, many Japanese Americans had left for suburbs further south, but traces of the community's history still remain in Crenshaw and Leimert Park. There's the Seinan Senior Citizens Center, the Japanese American Community Credit Union and watch and jewelry repairman James T. Nojima, who works out of Crenshaw Square.
Some Japanese Americans also continue to live in the neighborhood — like Athena Mari Asklipiadis, whose family has lived in South L.A. since the 1920s. She writes about local businesses for Japanese American community publication Pacific Citizen. "It is and always will be home," she says. "Although there has been gentrification that has changed the culture and landscape, I still feel the comfort of familiar faces and places… I love the people and diversity here. I miss the uniquely Japanese American things that have faded away, but I have come to love the existing cultures (Black and Latino) who make this place home — they are just as comfortable and just as a part of my identity."
Despite not being as prominent, there are still places where Japanese Americans have left a mark in Crenshaw. Here are a few below:
Holiday Bowl
On the east side of Crenshaw Boulevard, just south of Obama Boulevard, is a Starbucks with a distinctly mid-century facade. Although the building has become a location for the corporate coffee shop, its Googie-style architecture suggests a more interesting history. From 1958 to 2000, this was the site of the Holiday Bowl, a bowling alley founded by a group of Japanese Americans and known for its racially diverse crowd.
In a New York Times article published just after the bowling alley's closure, one of its waitresses, Jacqueline Sowell, told writer Don Terry, ''It's like a United Nations in there. Our employees are Hispanic, white, Black, Japanese, Thai, Filipino. I've served grits to as many Japanese customers as I do Black. We've learned from each other and given to each other. It's much more than just a bowling alley. It's a community resource.'' In his book "The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles, Scott Kurashige called the crowd "a true cross section of the community through teams composed of gardeners, florists, farmers, Buddhists, 442nd [Regimental Combat Team, a segregated Japanese American unit] veterans and housewives, among others."
The Holiday Bowl also had its own restaurant, called The Picnic Room, with a menu as uniquely varied as its regulars. In her 2003 novel "Southland," in which The Holiday Bowl plays an important role, Nina Revoyr describes it like this: "Here, more hodge-podge: hot links, donburi, jambalaya, ramen, hamburgers, corn bread, sashimi. For breakfast, there were omelets with home fries or rice." Although the Holiday Bowl has been closed for more than 20 years now, it remains beyond this building. Its original sign is part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Neon Art in Glendale, and the legacy of its restaurant lives on at Tak's Coffee Shop.
Tak's Coffee Shop
A few blocks south down Crenshaw from the former Holiday Bowl is Tak's Coffee Shop, small and unassuming, with a gray and beige storefront accessible from the parking lot of Crenshaw Square. Its name marks it as Japanese American, as does the smiling maneki neko, or good-luck cat, pictured on its sign. Inside, a whole shelf of maneki neko figurines beckon from the wall, white and gold, ranging in size from several inches to a couple feet tall.
Tak's was founded in 1996 by Mary Shizuru, a longtime Holiday Bowl waitress, and her business partner, Fujio Hori. In the short film "Breakfast at Tak's" by Tad Nakamura, Shizuru explains that Hori believed businesses with men's names brought in more money, so they named their coffee shop after her son. (Tak Shizuru went on to open his own business in the area, Tak's Hardware and Garden Supply, which closed due to the pandemic in December 2021.) Inspired by the Holiday Bowl, Tak's Coffee Shop served similarly multicultural food. "Where else could you get chashu and eggs and grits at the same time?" says one customer in "Breakfast at Tak's."
The coffee shop is now owned by Angelina and Florentino Bravo, a first-generation Mexican American couple, both of whom previously worked at the Holiday Bowl restaurant. "The majority of our customers are the grandchildren, the great-grandchildren, the great-great grandchildren of our older customers," says Angelina in a 2018 video by Momentos Cotidianos. "For me it is an honor that it continues generation to generation." The menu continues to offer a mix of Japanese American, Hawaiian and American diner food and soul food — including oyako donburi, saimin noodles, pancakes, grits, chili and rice and loco moco.
Crenshaw Square
One of the most visible remaining markers of Japanese American history in the area is Crenshaw Square. The shopping center that houses Tak's Coffee Shop was built in the 1950s by Nisei (second-generation Japanese American) developers. Seven decades later, its sign still retains its original design. As Asklipiadis points out, its red, angled frame resembles the Shinto torii gates that are ubiquitous in Japan. Although the shopping center was not the first major project by Japanese American developers in the area, it was the first to highlight Japanese-inspired architecture and landscaping, rather than trying to look like "a typical white-bread 'American' subdivision," writes Kurashige in "The Shifting Grounds of Race."
Crenshaw Square even had its own Japanese American summer festival like Little Tokyo's Nisei Week. "You would have Japanese dancing and music, food and a carnival," Lynetta McElroy, a longtime Leimert Park resident told Curbed writer Hadley Meares. "You had all the cultures just right here. The ladies were in kimonos, and they were dancing and singing, and they invited the onlookers to learn the dances and sing along." In her 2020 book "Sansei and Sensibility," Karen Tei Yamashita writes about remembering the festival long after she has forgotten other parts of her teenage experience: "My friends were a huddle of Asians. We exchanged long letters at school, then returned home to talk on the phone for hours. Of what we had to say to each other, I have no memory. I do remember that Teresa Yokoyama was crowned Miss Teen Sansei at Crenshaw Square."
Although this festival no longer takes place, you can still see the Japanese influence in not just Crenshaw Square itself but also the houses behind it on South Bronson Avenue. There, geometric designs made with wooden beams mark both the Japanese American and mid-century origins of the buildings. The trees and bushes are cut into precise, rounded shapes like painted clouds.
Grace Pastries
On Jefferson Boulevard, just east of Crenshaw, next to an Arco station, a sign for Grace Pastries stretches upward from an [empty storefront], marking a sweet history. From 1950 to 1989, this spot was home to a bakery run by George Izumi, named after his wife, Grace. Izumi was 21 when Executive Order 9066 forced his family out of their home in Hollywood and eventually into Manzanar concentration camp. There, he worked in the mess hall and after enlisting in the army, he was sent to continue his education at the School for Bakers and Cooks at Fort Meade in Maryland. In 1946, he returned to California, where he met and married Grace Kato, opening Grace Pastries with a $3,500 loan from her parents.
Over the business's nearly 40-year span, Grace Pastries had 14 locations across the L.A. area, from Redondo Beach to Monterey Park. One of the best known items on the bakery's menu was the "Dobash cake," Izumi's twist on the Hungarian Dobos torte, made of many thin layers of sponge cake and chocolate buttercream. "Because his clientele were mainly first and second-generation Japanese, they pronounced 'Dobos' as 'Do-ba-shi,'" Genelle Izumi, one of George and Grace's daughters told KCET. "So my dad came up with the name of Dobash." Dobash cake went on to become famous in Hawaii, because of the friendship and recipe trading between Izumi and the original owner of King's Bakery, Robert R. Taira. After Izumi retired and sold Grace Pastries, Genelle said he didn't look back. It closed soon after the sale. However, the bakery remains legendary among Japanese Americans, who still remember its Dobash cake, tea cakes, and, among Genelle's favorites, M&M cookies and plain old-fashioned doughnuts.
