Sent to Heart Mountain Relocation Center in northwest Wyoming- one of 10 internment camps established for the purpose of resettling Japanese-Americans who called the coast home-Uhachiro Teshima made the most of his culinary expertise and cut a deal that allowed him to leave Heart Mountain in Wyoming to come to nearby Denver (Colorado Governor Ralph Carr was a fierce opponent of anti-Japanese sentiment, which is one reason Teshima ended up here). The elder Teshima and his employees had been forced to abandon their original business in Los Angeles per President Roosevelt’s executive order evicting all Japanese-Americans from the west coast in light of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Photo and text courtesy of Carl Teshima.Īs Teshima tells it, roughly 60 years after the Hop Alley riot, his father, Uhachiro Teshima, re-established the food production company Rafu Shoyu at 3500 Larimer, the same building that today houses Hop Alley. Photograph depicts workers processing pickled vegetables for shipment to Japanese relocation camps throughout the United States. Despite his inclination to revitalize regional Chinese cuisine in the heart of Denver, Lee himself was unaware of the building’s history prior to signing the lease. Therefore, Teshima, who was similarly surprised to find the place where he grew up had been transformed into a Chinese restaurant, was able to deliver more than provisions when he let the new tenants in on their building’s history… 3500 Larimer: The Historyįounder of Rafu Shoyu Company Uhachiro Teshima (second from right) standing among his employees in factory at 3500 Larimer Street in 1942. While it is relevant that Teshima works at Pacific Mercantile, a respected grocer of mainly Japanese goods, the fact that his parents used to own the building at 3500 Larimer, now home to Hop Alley, is a striking twist of fate. In the midst of preparing for their grand opening, Lee and Somma were thrilled when Carl Teshima stopped by the restaurant, ostensibly there just to deliver produce. Teshima was making a routine delivery to 3500 Larimer Street and, because the building once housed his father’s soy sauce factory, he was excited to see it had been transformed into a Chinese restaurant – Hop Alley. Carl Teshima in front of his workplace, Pacific Mercantile, a grocer and distributer of mainly Japanese goods.
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