Japanese Immigrant and Restaurateur
Yuso Shinbo is portrayed by his son, Art Shinbo. Yuso was born in Kanazawa, Japan in 1888. In 1906 or 1907, he chose to leave the family business and emigrate to the United States for work in his brother’s Portland import/export trade. It was at that time he learned to cook from a German man in the hot kitchen of a Portland hotel. In 1910, he took a job cooking for a Hood River family, but left for Walla Walla at the invitation of his brother, who had moved his business there, near First and Main Streets in the downtown area.
He returned to Japan to marry Tomiko Miyamura in 1922. The couple met through family matchmakers and wed not having seen each other before. A few years after returning to Walla Walla, Yuso opened the Imperial Café. The downtown restaurant became one of the largest and most popular in town, serving Chinese-American style fare. At the time, only three Japanese families lived in the valley. Yuso was a great booster of local sports and the young people participating in them, often hosting teams from the high school and college at the restaurant.
With the onset of World War II, The Imperial Café had to close because all Japanese people in the community were subject to an 8:00 pm - 8:00 am curfew, which made it impossible for him to prepare food for the breakfast trade. A rock was also thrown through his brother's store window. The Shinbo family endured the general mistrust and dislike directed toward Japanese people at the time, but was not forced into a “relocation” camp, because Walla Walla was just outside the exclusion area, a line that ran through the Tri-Cities along the Columbia River. Yuso took a job at Whitman College, one of the few places hiring at the time, as a cook in Lyman House. Yuso and Tomiko later became the cook and cashier for the Army Corps of Engineers in Walla Walla. The couple was honored for their service to the Corps within a week of receiving their naturalization papers in 1955, once the law had been changed to allow Japanese to become citizens.
Museum hours are 10 am to 5 pm daily. Admission is free to members, children under 6, and through a reciprocal agreement Tamástslikt Cultural Institute's Inwai Circle cardholders and enrolled members of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation; $3 for children ages 6-12; $6 for seniors (62+) and students; and $7 for adults. Your admission cost can be applied to a membership, which includes free admission to all Living History performances, priced beginning at $25. For more information, contact Fort Walla Walla Museum at 509-525-7703 or info@fortwallawallamuseum.org.
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