Uwajimaya

Fujimatsu Moriguchi began the business in 1928 in Tacoma, where he sold fishcakes and other goods from a truck, calling on Japanese farmers, loggers and fishermen at their work sites [1]. He took the name from Uwajima, the Ehime Prefecture town where he had first gone into the trade, and ya, the Japanese word for store [1]. In 1942 the government confined him at Tule Lake along with the rest of the family, and once released they made their way to Seattle and opened on South Main Street in the International District [1]. Fujimatsu died in 1962, and rather than hand the company to his eldest alone, as tradition would have it, it went to his four sons [1]. Those sons later divided the ownership among themselves, their three sisters and their mother Sadako [1]. The flagship store moved in 2000 into quarters of sixty thousand square feet, close to double what it had, within Uwajimaya Village [1]. Sadako Moriguchi put in time at the store from its start until she was eighty-five, and she died in 2002 [1].