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Published April 14, 2025

“It Was Our Place” 

Looking back at the vibrant Japanese American community of Los Angeles’s Crenshaw neighborhood.
"Holiday Bowl? Honestly, it was our Mecca. I was 13 years old when I first came to Holiday Bowl. From the moment it opened and until it closed, I was a regular." Quote from Nick Nagatani, member of the Yellow Brotherhood.When it first opened in 1958, Holiday Bowl attracted diverse people from the surrounding neighborhood: Gardeners, florists, farmers, Buddhists, laborers, housewives, and students. They were mostly Nisei and Sansei (second and third generation Japanese Americans). Faithfully, Sansei in Crenshaw had dances and house parties every Friday and Saturday night during the 1960s and 70s. Nick Nagatani recalls, “So you’d go to a dance or party or both and then around 12 or 1 o’clock when everything slows down, you’d go to Holiday Bowl to see who’s there and try to continue the party as long as you could.”During the mid 1900s, Asian people were not allowed inside white owned bowling alleys in Los Angeles. Thus, four Nisei men, Harry Oshiro, Hanko Okuda, Paul Uyemura, and Harley Kusumoto, opened up Holiday Bowl in 1958 through selling shares of the business in the Japanese American community. In Shelley v. Kraemer (1948), the Supreme Court ruled that segregated housing covenants were unconstitutional. Japanese Americans were able to move to areas they were previously barred from. This included Crenshaw, which became the largest community of Japanese Americans in the US mainland after World War II when over 120,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated in US concentration camps. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, many Black Americans moved to Crenshaw, too, which led to the majority of white residents to leave Crenshaw in “white flight.”For Japanese Americans rebuilding their lives after WWII incarceration, Holiday Bowl quickly became a safe place, largely thanks to Mary Shizurur, a long time waitress at the Holiday Bowl Coffee Shop. Patty Hirama, a close friend of Mary, recalls “We all knew Mary, because at the dances, they’d be serving alcohol, so people would get drunk. Holiday Bowl was open 24/7, and people would come in there either drunk or high, but Mary always made sure all the young people had coffee or something to eat before they left. She made sure they were safe and could make it home ok. So we all got along. She was like our second mother. One customer recalls that he was always broke, but Mary would treat him to a few scoops of rice and char siu.”In the summer of 1970, 31 Japanese Sansei died from drug overdose, which was a taboo topic for many older Japanese Americans in denial of their youth’s struggles. The younger generation, however, wanted to prevent further deaths. In Crenshaw, Japanese American youth came together to form the Yellow Brotherhood, a grassroots organization. They also organized drug prevention programs and provided support for ex-gang members and people coming off military service. To give their community a purpose, they underwent anticapitalist political education, learning their own histories as Asian Americans, and venturing towards a Third World Consciousness.Japanese Americans outside the Yellow Brotherhood stepped up too. Tak Kikuchi, son of Mary Kikuchi and founder of Tak’s Hardware, recalls his friend, Al Morita who owned an Arco Gas Station. Morita would hire a lot of young men from the neighborhood to keep them off the street. So he would have three times as much staff as he needed. Maybe people in Crenshaw realized they only had each other.During the 1960s and ‘70s, many non-white people saw there was something wrong in the current system, which led them to self determination. Between August 11, 1965 and August 17, 1965, the Watts Rebellion took place in LA, a rebellion to challenge and overthrow the racist systems of oppression. Essentially, a protest against the LAPD and all forces of society that worked to deprive Black Americans of jobs, housing, and dignity. “White men, you started all this the day you brought the first slave to this country!” However, Nick Nagatani remembers that on Crenshaw’s Jefferson Boulevard, which was made up of a community of small Japanese businesses, not one shop owned by Japanese Americans was damaged. Nick states, “Story is, a lot of African American neighbors came out to the streets to protect these JA businesses and shops because they were their neighbors.”Nearly thirty years later, the 1992 Los Angeles uprising erupted, which was incited by two events. On March 3, 1991, four LAPD officers viciously attacked a Black motorist, Rodney King after a high speed chase. Then on March 16, 1991, a Korean shopkeeper Soon Ja Du shot and killed a fifteen year old Black teenager, Latasha Harlins. Convicted of involuntary manslaughter, Soon Ja Du received a mere five years of probation. The last straw occurred on April 29, 1992, when all four LAPD officers were acquitted, despite their assault on King with metal batons being captured on video and broadcast around the world. Enraged, people took to the streets, rioting for five days. During this time, local patrons and regulars assembled to sit outside the Holiday Bowl. People recall that Rodney King also came out to protect the Holiday Bowl. He stated, “The Bowl is our place.”Perhaps, the regulars were more compelled to show up for Holiday Bowl because they saw their neighborhood was changing. In 2000, Holiday Bowl closed. There were a number of reasons. Many Japanese Americans, carrying prejudice towards Black people, left Crenshaw after the uprisings in 1965 and 1992. Moreover, busing took Japanese American youth out of their local schools during the 1980s, so people lost connection to their neighbors. In more recent years, Black Americans have been moving out; in some cases because they could no longer afford to stay in their own neighborhood. Nick Nagatani: “It’s funny because up until maybe five years ago, you would never see a white person walking a dog in Crenshaw. So the first time I saw that, I thought, well there goes the neighborhood.”Holiday Bowl was a bowling alley built from and for the community. The four Nisei men who pooled their resources together to open it saw that their neighbors needed the space. But without a community to serve, Holiday Bowl no longer had a purpose. For those who had the privilege to grow up in the neighborhood during the 1960s to 90s, they will always remember Holiday Bowl. Tak Kikuchi, who has lived in Crenshaw since a young age and whole mother went on to open Tak’s Coffee Shop, reflects, “The best memories of my life come from Holiday Bowl.”

This comic was created through Crucial Comix's volunteer editing program. It was edited by Sara Ryan and Maki Naro.

Sources

Breakfast at Tak’s by Tadashi Nakamura (film)
From Little Tokyo to Crenshaw, PBS SoCal (film)
“Not Bowling Alone: How the Holiday Bowl in Crenshaw Became an Integrated Leisure Space” by Ryan Reft. August 22, 2013.
“The Legacy of Multiracial Solidarity in L.A.’s Crenshaw Neighborhood,” by Scott Kurashige. April 13, 2022.

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