Just like the Army-you follow directions.” At the end of the war, he found work in Chicago flipping English muffins on a grill, and gaining more bread, cake, and cupcake experience before he earned enough to return to California in 1946. It’s all written out step by step, you got it made. Once the Army learned of his cooking experience, they sent him to the Cooks and Baker’s School at Ft. When the Nisei draft was re-enacted, George enlisted from camp, fully prepared to train for combat. And he recalls that the mutton stew sure used to stink.
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But learning from the Issei men in the kitchen proved to be slippery: “the Issei just said, a piece of that, a scoop of that-it still tasted good-but they sure couldn’t tell you how to make it.” In the end, he claims he didn’t learn much, since all he did was cut out biscuits. He got a job in Mess Hall #16, which required getting up at three a.m.
The family was sent to Manzanar, where he first worked as a carpenter, but really what he wanted to learn was how to cook. Growing up in the ‘30s also meant picking up a sack of day olds from Wonder Bread that turned nice and soft in the steamer and eaten with oleo or lard if the kids were that lucky. I’m also pretty sure my mom would pickle all of the fish guts.” Dad would go fishing and bring back whole sacks of bonita and mackarel, which we’d cook with shoyu and sato, turning it all into gelatin and pour over hot rice with cooked beet leaves. “In Santa Monica there used to be a city dump where someone would throw all their walnut shells out, and us kids, we’d pick through the shells and eat what we could find. It was a hard time in America, and daily meals for a family of ten, let alone a powdered donut, were meager or non-existent. George was one of eight kids, which taught him to be fiercely independent, and some of his earliest chores was learning to harnass the horse to the wagon and spread manure on the fields. The founder, George Izumi, is a Nisei-born in Hollywood in 1921 and raised on farms where his father Riyozo raised commercial flowers and vegetables, as the majority of Issei did at that time. The dobash cake and oh, the teacakes!” These rapturous recollections are especially common amongst the Nisei and young Sansei, who describe a trip to Grace as “the ultimate good,” for a generation craving sweet memories that lingered. Within a decade, Grace Pastries had the highest name recognition of any bakery in Los Angeles, and eventually boasted fourteen outlets throughout the greater Los Angeles county.Īmong his devoted customers was Marian Manaka, who remembers fondly, “My sister and I lived together right there on Jefferson Boulevard and used to take our two kids in a stroller past all the shops on our way to Grace, where we always got a treat. As the customer base swelled exponentially, George Izumi expanded to a larger location six blocks away on Jefferson and Crenshaw, right where the J Yellow Car line ended. The staff were always neatly coiffed and dressed in starched uniforms, ready to greet customers from the moment doors opened. The original store was a tiny retail space, only 50 feet deep, but the walls were neatly papered and the glass cases nearly burst with a dizzying array of buttery confections. These were edible trophies for a community finally rising from the harsh realities of World War II, and for a time, it almost seemed that the bakery couldn’t be able to keep up with all of the demands. For every wedding, every graduation, every grand opening or anniversary, and especially when a child’s birthday was celebrated, there was a specialty cake from Grace a bed of pastel roses, scalloped buttercream borders, a riot of plastic palm trees or circus clowns. At Grace Pastries, the cake was king a symbolic reward that came as a result of the Japanese American communities’ hard-earned post-war successes. Talk to anyone who grew up in the Crenshaw district of southwestern Los Angeles and they’ll tell you how they remember the sweet aroma that once spilled from the doors of Grace Pastries. (Photograph by Toyo Miyatake Studio, Gift of the Alan Miyatake Family. George Izumi of Grace Pastries on Art Linkletter show to celebrate National Retail Bakers Week, California, April 22, 1960.
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