Historic Hood River
“Restaurant Owned by Hachiya and Kuge”
Notes
I’m having a little trouble piecing this together. The caption on the reverse is in ballpoint pen, so not contemporaneous, and says, “Restaurant owned by Hachiya and Kuge, 1915”. I find reference to a “Toby” Hachiya who was a janitor at the OR%N station, working for Mr. Fredricy. He carried the mail from the train depot to the post office. In 1915 he married Miss Moriota, and according to the Glacier would henceforth be know as Mr. Morioka, “according to the Japanese custom.” We see they had two children, both of whom died as infants, but he is referred to as a janitor at the OR&N depot until a 1922 article which describes him as the “Japanese restaurant man.”
I can’t find any reference to Mr. Kuge.
The 1916 Sanborn map shows a Japanese Restaurant on Second Street, where City Hall is now located. It would have had to move when City Hall was constructed in 1920, but I can’t find it on the 1928 map.
An undated image of the rail depot staff shows a man who looks very much like the man to the right in this image. If that match is correct, that would be Mr and Mrs. Moriota with their infant in the middle of the depot image. Unfortunately this messes up the timeline Jeffrey Bryant worked out based on Homer Yasui’s possible IDs of the man to the right in the depot image.
I think there are several strands to this snapshot of history that still need to be worked out!
Bill Seaton
By 1946, this could have become Young's Bakery next door to JCPenney's on Oak Street.
L.E.
This would not be the Hachiya in the photo. Too young. But I thought it was definitely worth reading about Frank Hachiya.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/44881801/frank-tadakadzu-hachiya
Buck Parker
One or both inset photos might have been taken some years earlier.
Cecelia
One of the books used by the research committee at the museum, Japanese-Americans of the Mid-Columbia Area and their Relatives, lists a T. KUGA with this information:
Born: Nov. 1880
Entered US: Oct. 1, 1905
Address: Hood River
Remarks: Farmer, Restauranteur (on First St. between Cascade and Oak).
Jeff Bryant
Toichi Kuga bought the corner at Oak and First in 1911. See Hood River Glacier, 1911-11-23,page9