Next time you visit Little Tokyo Station/Arts District Station, take a look at the plaza level interpretive display honoring the legacy of the Atomic Cafe. The display presents archival photos of the original Atomic Cafe, regular patrons and friends of the cafe, and members of the Sekizawa family who ran the cafe from 1946 to 1989.
A closeup of the display.
Nancy Sekizawa, whose father opened the cafe, provided a first-person narrative and personal photographs. Photographs are displayed in a descriptive timeline of significant events that took place at the cafe from the 1940s, when it opened, until the 1990s, when it became the Troy Cafe.
Years in the making, the exhibit pays homage to the building that had previously housed the Atomic Cafe. The building held significant cultural and historical memory and had to be demolished in January 2015 to construct the Little Tokyo/Arts District Station as part of our Regional Connector project.
The Little Tokyo community led the development of the interpretive display, aiming to express some of the history of Little Tokyo through the lens of the beloved Atomic Cafe and Troy Cafe. Community leaders partnered with the Little Tokyo Service Center to host community visioning sessions, worked with a writer and historian from the Little Tokyo Historical Society and coordinated with the Sekizawa family to create the timeline of photographs and milestones. Photographer Hal O’Brien provided the Sekizawa family with the iconic nighttime image of the Atomic Cafe for inclusion in the exhibit. The display also includes bricks salvaged from the original building.
The legendary Atomic Cafe opened in 1946 in the wake of World War II and after many forced relocations, the Atomic Cafe’s final home was the brick building near the corner of 1st Street and Central Avenue in Little Tokyo. It was named Atomic Cafe by original owner, Minoru Matoba, so that people would never forget the nuclear devastation of World War II.
The cafe was open at all hours serving chashu pork noodles and punk music to the “disparate, diverse denizens of DTLA.” Known as a place for inclusion, Mr. Matoba’s vision for the Atomic Cafe was one that was centered around service to the community and was open 24/7 to provide meals to people who worked odd hours or had no families.
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