How to LA:

Discovering The Past and Present of Little Tokyo

Episode 13

Grant Sunoo

My earliest memories of Little Tokyo are coming to visit my great-grandmother who lived in a Little Tokyo Towers, up on the 10th or 15th floor. My earliest memories are throwing slippers off on her balcony and like watching them fall.

Brian De Los Santos  

Wait-I could see like a chancla being throw, or like a fluffy slipper.

Grant Sunoo

Yea.

Brian De Los Santos  

Chanclas. Okay.

Grant Sunoo 

Zori, if you're Japanese.

Brian De Los Santos  

From LAis Studios, this is How To LA, where every episode we explore how different Angelenos connect with this city. I'm your host, Brian De Los Santos. Today, we're hanging out in Little Tokyo, home of my favorite coffee shop Cafe Dulce. This is our second neighborhood profile. In our very first episode, we went to West Adams, my home neighborhood. If you haven't heard that one, go check it out. After that episode, we asked you what neighborhoods we should visit next. So now we're here meeting some of the people who make Little Tokyo the special place it is. Little Tokyo is one of the first communities here in LA where I felt that feeling of community advocacy, everywhere that I'd stepped into. It's one of those feelings that's kind of hard to explain, but I think you'll get what I mean as we go along.

Grant Sunoo 

So we're standing here on Aiso Street and 1st Street, in front of the Union Center for the Arts.

Brian De Los Santos  

This is Grant Sunoo. He's a director of community engagement at the Little Tokyo service center.

Grant Sunoo

When I think about what I love about this neighborhood. It's really the intersection of culture, and arts, and history. The Union Center for the Arts is a really good example of that.

Brian De Los Santos  

This building has been home to a lot of different things over the years, from a church to an Asian American Theatre Company. Like a lot of buildings and Little Tokyo, it's home to a lot of history.

Grant Sunoo 

When the Japanese Americans were interned during World War Ⅱ, it became a place for them to store their belongings. And then also during World War Ⅱ, this was a Community Center for African American folks in the community. Little Tokyo started to become known as Bronzeville because there were a lot of African American folks who were migrating to the west coast during that era. And this was really a kind of like a jumping off point for them and a place for them to get settled. We think about Little Tokyo as primarily-now a Japanese American neighborhood, but I think it's important that it's a lot more than that. It's a sacred place for people who are Tongva, people who are Japanese American, people who are Latino, people who are Black. It's a place that is multi-ethnic and really kind of lifts up all of those histories, and a place that shares those values.

Brian De Los Santos  

We start walking down the historic First Street corridor, in front of each building is a plaque that tells you all the different businesses that have been there over the years. We don't get too far before Grant pulls us under an awning of one of those buildings. It's his favorite mochi shop, Fugetsu-Do.

Brian Kito

Started in 1903 by my grandfather, so I'm the third generation, and next year will be 120 years.

Brian De Los Santos  

This is Brian Kito, the owner.

Brian Kito

We specialize in mochi, sweets, candies. Some of them are imported, but most of the stuff we make is here, we make ourselves.

Brian De Los Santos

What is your favorite?

Brian Kito

My favorite is the strawberry bean paste with ganache chocolate on top. I don't know anyone that doesn't like it.

Brian De Los Santos  

I asked Brian, what are some of the changes you've seen over the years as a business owner here in Little Tokyo?

Brian Kito

The store is still the same size has been for 75 years, but we pump a lot more stuff out of it. (Laughter.) I can remember the heydays of the 60s, my dad's era. My grandfather's era was back in the 30s, before the depression. We have a very instinctive community that somehow is able to pull things together and survive.

Brian De Los Santos  

We're back on the road with a goodie bag of mochi, the strawberry bean paste with chocolate on top. It just melts in your mouth-fruity, but then that chocolate gives it a little like..I don't know, a little umph.

Grant Sunoo

Good, huh?

Brian De Los Santos  

Delicious. I know all the girlies love the Trader Joe's mochi, but you need to come down to the store and try this one. Okay, back to the story. This block has a bunch of buildings that are owned by the Little Tokyo service center. They bought them to keep them from being destroyed.

Grant Sunoo 

The interesting thing about this block, is there's like this mix of restaurants and confectionary stores. Above, this was all historically low income housing. These were all single-room occupancy hotels, which is where Japanese American immigrants were living when they first came. That's a legacy of affordable housing that we've been trying to protect, especially for low income seniors.

Brian De Los Santos  

Now, these units Grant's talking about are some of the only affordable housing in the area.

Ryan Chu-Tachikawa

When I was looking for housing in LA. I wanted to live in Little Tokyo. I mean, that's where my office was gonna be and everything. I just couldn't find anything affordable.

Brian De Los Santos  

That's Ryan Chu-Tachikawa. He's actually the guy who pitched us Little Tokyo after he heard our last neighborhood episode. He used to work with Grant, so he put us in touch. Ryan says the community and Little Tokyo helped them learn about his identity as an Asian American.

Ryan Chu-Tachikawa

A lot of folks here, their families have been here for generations. I actually grew up in Japan for part of my childhood as well. So, I felt like I was Japanese and American, not Japanese American, if that makes sense.

Brian De Los Santos  

But working in Little Tokyo and spending time with its community helped them feel like that was changing.

Ryan Chu-Tachikawa

When I come to these places, like this, it instantly kind of feels like a piece of home.

Brian De Los Santos  

Brian de- I asked him what his favorite place in Little Tokyo is?

Brian De Los Santos  

So the cooking station looks really cool. It's kind of looks like they were making waffles, but like little balls.

Ryan Chu-Tachikawa

My favorite place is Tanota Takoyaki. I gotta say this is like the best takoyaki that I've had in America, maybe even in Japan too.

Chef Takeo Shibatani 

Do you order takoyaki?

Brian De Los Santos  

He did.

Brian De Los Santos  

That's Chef Takeo.

Chef Takeo Shibatani  

Base curry, it's like a savory food, and the main ingredient for the octopus.

Brian De Los Santos  

Oh, I love octopus!

Chef Takeo Shibatani 

Tako means octopus.

Brian De Los Santos  

Is it spicy?

Chef Takeo Shibatani

A little.

Brian De Los Santos  

The chef gave us a tip. You have to cut it in the middle with your chopstick and then eat it, because it's so hot inside.

Chef Takeo Shibatani

Would you like to do a 4x4? It comes with four flavors.

Brian De Los Santos  

Oh yeah, let's do the four flavors. Let's just try them all. Yeah. They come out and they serve it in little box, it made me feel like I was transported to another place, honestly. It was just awesome street food. Alright, y'all, the tour continues. We walked down to the end of the block where there's a big courtyard for the Japanese American National Museum.

Sharon Kamegai Cocita

The Japanese American National museum holds actually a really dear place in my heart.

Brian De Los Santos  

This is Sharon Kamegai Cocita. She works with Grant, at the Little Tokyo Service Center as the Director of Development. She says the museum is her favorite place here.

Sharon Kamegai Cocita

I'm a transplant from the Bay Area. I grew up going to the San Francisco J town, the San Jose J town. So when I came down to LA, I was looking for my home. When I had my first child, I knew I needed to get involved. So I was working with the Japanese American National Museum when my children were little.

Brian De Los Santos  

Sharon's kids names are actually inscribed in the concrete here in the courtyard. She wanted them to have a physical connection to the Japanese American heritage.

Sharon Kamegai Cocita

It was really important for me to have their names here on their courtyard, because with the history of displacement in the Japanese American community, I felt it was really important and significant that we have a place of permanence.

Brian De Los Santos  

Let's talk a little bit more about this theme of permanence versus displacement. Little Tokyo is a community that has seen several waves of displacement. First with Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War Two, then with gentrification, making much of the area unaffordable.

Grant Sunoo

When we talk about displacement as something that has really shaped this community, the displacement of people who rent houses, equally important to consider.

Unknown Passerby 

You're getting the mayor of Little Tokyo.

Brian De Los Santos  

So, we're walking around, and it seems like Grant recognizes every other person from a different community organization.

Grant Sunoo

(Hey Kyle!) That's my friend Alma, who works for Sustainable Little Tokyo.

Brian De Los Santos  

No shade, but it felt staged. Like, we're walking around, he's saying hi to everyone. It's like a sitcom or something.

Nancy Yap

Hi, I'm Nancy. I'm the President of the Arts District, Little Tokyo Neighborhood Council.

Ryan Lee  

My name is Ryan, I'm the director of Terasaki Budokan, here to serve the community and Little Tokyo in downtown LA.

Brian De Los Santos  

We're just walking through that shopping area in front of Cafe Dulce, and it's like who's who of Little Tokyo's nonprofit world.

Nancy Yap

So many nonprofits located here. It's hard not to run into each other.

Ryan Lee  

This little strip outside Cafe Dulce is where all of the most intense collaboration happens in Little Tokyo.

Brian De Los Santos  

You're gonna have to introduce me, so I can go to the parties with you, dude.

Brian De Los Santos  

Okay, we heard from everyone else what their favorite space was. But, we haven't heard from you Grant. What is your favorite space here in Little Tokyo?

Grant Sunoo

My personal favorite spot is under the "Home is Little Tokyo" mural on the corner of Central Avenue and First Street. We are blessed to have a lot of great public art. But this one is my favorite because I think that it really embodies the community spirit-of the neighborhood. A lot of the cultural activities are represented like Taiko, and Odori, the traditional dancing. But you also have a lot of symbols, and kind of representation of the struggle that this neighborhood has gone through to identify its own future and to have self determination. I think it's just a really great embodiment of our values as a community.

Brian De Los Santos  

I really can't stress how much Little Tokyo feels like it's built and cherished by the people who work and live here. We came here today expecting just to talk to Grant, but all these coworkers of his and just people he knows from the community, we're so excited to say hi in chat. I love that there's art and other there's awesome food of course, I love that there's history. As a non Asian American, I felt like this space, this community is accessible to anyone. I go bring my parents here, and have a good time at Far Bar. I could bring my boyfriend, I could bring my friends. It feels like sharing is part of the DNA. It's part of why they're here. And it's part of why advocacy is here. That to me shows LA, that's straight up LA. That's what we want it to be. If you want it to check out your neighborhood next, tell us what makes it special. We got a little widget on our website at LAist.com/HowtoLA. Look for the button that says "Tell us your story."

Brian De Los Santos  

This is How to LA from LAist Studios. I'm your host Brian De Los Santos. Support for this podcast is made possible by Gordon and Dona Crawford who believe that quality journalism makes Los Angeles a better place to live. This program is made possible in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people. Tune in tomorrow.