Grocers Ask: What’s the Shelf Life of Hope?

Traffic roars past on Centinela Avenue, but it is quiet inside the store. Teenagers Ryan and Tammy Uyehara do homework when not waiting on the day’s final customers. Their parents, June and Wayne, walk slowly toward the back, then climb steep stairs to the office. It’s almost closing time at Aloha Grocery.

Like the rest of the store, the office is nothing fancy. Used also for storage, it is unpretentious, worn tenderly by time and filled with memories. June and Wayne, both 46, sit shoulder to shoulder on the displaced rear seat of a van they bought from a cousin to haul goods from the market.

Since 1956, when it opened as a one-aisle store, the family business has survived primarily by serving the Japanese American community. It has become a landmark at 4515 Centinela, between Culver City and Marina del Rey, an area where Japanese immigrants and their American-born children once toiled in celery fields.

Now the Uyeharas feel lost at times, left behind by changes in the community, caught between struggles and dreams passed from one generation to the next. Maybe, they think, they have struggled long enough. Maybe they need new dreams.

In Hawaiian, “aloha” is an affectionate greeting. More and more, as shoppers flock to supermarkets, as lifestyles and demographics of the community change, the Uyeharas face another use of the word: Goodbye.

They have considered closing, getting jobs and walking away from the pressures of a languishing business. Wayne weighs the advantages of steady paychecks, benefits, vacations to spend with family. Then he thinks of his father.

The Aloha was Hiroshi Uyehara’s dream. “Hiroshi, own your own,” his mother would tell him as a child. He envisioned it as he attended school in Japan; worked in Hawaii; hauled coal while imprisoned at Tule Lake, a World War II internment camp; and as he and wife Alice worked long days, years and decades to build the business.

Until almost two years ago, Hiroshi, 74, worked relentlessly, making all business decisions. A stroke forced retirement when nothing else could, leaving June and Wayne to make their own decisions.

They hope to give the Aloha one last try, but they have been turned down for a loan from one bank and are waiting to hear back from a second. The money would be used for minor improvements to the building, enabling them to refocus their inventory to appeal to a broader population, and to advertise.

They know it may be too late, but they believe there still is a place for an old-fashioned neighborhood store built on ideals set forth by its founder--hard work, appreciation, service and kindness--and that it is worthy of their every effort to save an old man’s dream.

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Most of the Japanese American businesses that emerged in the 1950s on Centinela are gone now. Bonnie Sakamoto, 72, owner of M & S Pharmacy, which opened in 1953, receives offers regularly from nearby chains who want to buy her out.

“I hate to sell it,” she says. “They would buy it and just close it down. . . . An era is passing, and I think it’s only a matter of time before we aren’t here.”

Many Japanese Americans who originally moved here have grown old or died. Their children, unable to afford housing in the area, have moved to other neighborhoods. The change is apparent even within the Uyehara family. Wayne and June live in Westchester. One sister lives in La Habra, another in North Hills. A brother lives in Whittier.

The Uyeharas came to L.A. from Hawaii in 1955. For 10 years after the war, Hiroshi and a partner had peddled groceries in Honolulu from the back of a Chevy truck. When the supermarkets came, Hiroshi sensed it was time to move on.

He and Alice, who were married during the war, brought their young family to California. For a year, Hiroshi worked at a downtown market, learning the ways of mainland business. In 1956, they opened the Aloha in a small space, 10 feet wide, sandwiched between a real estate office and barber shop.

What the business lacked in inventory, it made up for with service. In the old days, people bought rice in 100-pound canvas bags. Hiroshi delivered them and poured the rice into storage bins for shoppers. If they walked to the store, he offered to drive them home.

And, always, he thanked them.

“He always let people know how much he appreciated their business,” Wayne says. “He taught us to appreciate what we had, because there were always people who were less fortunate.”

The children grew up in the store. Kathy Nakamura, Wayne’s older sister, recalls standing on wooden crates to reach the cash register when she was 10. Wayne, younger sister Gail Uyehara and younger brother Tommy Uyehara took turns sorting pop bottles, washing windows, hiding behind boxes to read comic books.

In 1966, the business moved into a bigger building across the street, its present site. Business was good in the 1970s but slowly tapered off. In 1985, Hiroshi embarked on a new endeavor, a way to boost business, which became his passion.

He set out to make his own tofu, which required several trips to Japan to learn the old ways. For years, he experimented in the back of the store, seeking to make tofu with a smooth texture that was soft but firm enough to eat with chopsticks. He envisioned a specific taste, clear in his mind, but difficult to create. Refusing to use preservatives, he tried different techniques to increase shelf life.

Initially, Aloha tofu was sold only in-house, but in an attempt to increase earnings, it was later sold wholesale. Distributors who had become friends over the years helped the product into stores, but production costs and shelf life remained problems.

“He’s a perfectionist,” Wayne says. “The tofu was very labor-intensive, and pricing was very competitive. He wanted things done in a very precise way, and it made it difficult to mass-produce, because he was so critical about the quality.”

Hiroshi also developed his own soy milk, removing the strong smell of the beans. On the strength of that item, business picked up.

One hot August day in 1995, however, Hiroshi went home from the store and took a cool shower. And then collapsed to the floor.

The family sold the tofu business last winter, just as it started to turn a profit.

“Shiyo ga nai,” Alice Uyehara explains. It’s an expression that implies helplessness to do anything else: What else can one do? It was an expression used during the war when they were forced into relocation camps.

The buyer agreed to continue its name, Aloha Tofu, but there was a sense of loss. And the old man cried.

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Wayne Uyehara leans back against the checkout stand, his arms folded across his chest. June checks the shelves: shibzuke (pickled mixed vegetables), ama shoga (sweet ginger), kyuri (pickled cucumber) and, near the end of the aisle, below a sign marked “New Item,” tamales.

More Latinos have moved into the area, and the Uyeharas just now are trying to adjust to the changing demographics. Part of their plan to revitalize the business is to offer more items that cross cultural eating habits while continuing to serve the Japanese American community.

Across the street, Mago’s Famous Hamburgers, owned by the Fukumoto family, also reflects the area’s diversity: teriyaki chicken burgers, sukiyaki burgers, chow mein, burritos and hot dogs.

At the Aloha, the problems are not just declining numbers, but changing lifestyles as well. More people, busy with work and families, eat out, and younger generations of Japanese Americans eat less traditional food.

Wayne begins stacking 20-pound sacks of rice. He was at the store until 3:30 in the morning as paint crews prepared the store to shoot a steak sauce commercial. In a couple of days, another film crew will be in to shoot a scene for a pilot, drawn to Aloha’s unique, old-fashioned interior.

It is not yet noon, and already the day has been long. Earlier in the morning, a second bank called with bad news. The Uyeharas’ application for a loan had been denied.

“It’s a setback,” Wayne says, “but there’s still hope. There are still things I can try. . . . We feel that there’s no way we can compete with supermarkets in certain ways, so we’re going to focus more on the produce, the meats and fish, where we are more than competitive.”

He will contact more banks. Shiyo ga nai.

Tony Osumi, 30, a teacher and artist, moved to the neighborhood last month. He and another artist, hearing of the Uyeharas’ struggle, hope to gather local youths and paint a mural on the side of the building, describing the history of the store and the community.

“One of the reasons I moved here was because of the small family-owned businesses and the sense of history here,” Osumi says. “There’s something special about shopping at the same store my grandmother shopped at, walking down the same aisles she walked down.”

As for Hiroshi, the patriarch, it’s OK if the store must be closed, he says. Since the stroke, he walks slowly. His speech is slurred, but his thoughts are clear.

He has started praying, but not for the store. His family, his children and grandchildren are foremost in his mind. They are his true legacy.

“I pray for Wayne,” he says. “Every morning, every night, I pray for him.”