OpenStreetMap (new tab)

Google Map (new tab)

Google Streetview (new tab)

This Japanese-American-owned business was closed in 1942, due to the internment of all Japanese living on the Pacific Coast. It was one of several Japanese confectionery shops closed in the city, causing a break in the supply chain of fortune cookies to Chinese restaurants. Gary T. Ono wrote: "World War II was the turning point for the fortune cookie becoming Chinese. Japanese businesses had to shut down because of the forced evacuation of all West Coast inhabitants of Japanese ancestry, U.S. citizen or not. Among the Japanese confectionery businesses closed were Benkyodo, Shungetsu-do, Shinanoya and Takeda in San Francisco and Fugetsudo and Umeya among others in Los Angeles. Umeya used to supply the fortune cookies to the Chinese and Japanese owned Chop Suey restaurants in Central and Southern California before the War. Of course, the Japanese owned Chop Suey restaurants were shuttered for the duration of the war, and for most, forever." (See Gary T. Ono, "Japanese American Fortune Cookie: A Taste of Fame or Fortune - Part 2,"Accessed 04/12/2012.) Dorothea Lange photographed the front of K. Shinanoya 's Confectionery in 1942 (1603 Post Street), along with two other houses on Post Street in San Francisco, CA, evacuated by their Japanese-American inhabitants.

PCAD id: 17762