Raymond “Mits” Akashi

January 9, 1934 - October 23, 2022

Raymond “Mits” Akashi, January 9, 1934-October 23, 2002, passed peacefully surrounded by family, friends, and his beloved five dogs, Hana, Koo, Lina, Lulu, and Momo. He was born in Merced, California. Mits spent his early years in Mt. Eden, a town made up primarily of families of Japanese ancestry. His father was the second principal of the Japanese school there. The Mt. Eden Japanese Association provided his family with a small 2 bedroom house as part of the compensation for serving as second principal. Mits shared one of the bedrooms with his brothers, Toshikazu and Motomu. He spent the first part of his youth attending the Japanese school as well as the elementary school in Mt. Eden. He also went out to the fields with his mother to pick strawberries, tomatoes, and flowers to help out with the family income. When he had time, he liked to play kick the can and baseball.

When he was 11, Mits was deported to Japan with his parents and siblings because his father was deemed a Japanese sympathizer. He and his family sailed from Portland on the USS General Gordon. He was separated from his father and brothers since the women and children were segregated in the bow and the men were in the stern. It was a miserable journey across the Pacific with huge waves tossing the vessel up and down so much that most of the time, Mits was too seasick to leave his cabin even to see his father and brothers. Upon his arrival in Japan, Mits took a train from Yokohoma to his father’s home in Saga. During that trip, he rode through Hiroshima not long after the atomic bomb was dropped. He recalled seeing a 5 or 6 story brick chimney that was bent in half from the heat generated by the explosion.

About his time in Japan, Mits recalled being poor and hungry. His father’s family didn’t exactly welcome him and his family because of the shortage of food. His father eventually acquired some land from the Japanese government but it was so full of rocks and roots that it was difficult to farm. Mits also remembered being bullied in school because he not only talked and dressed differently, he was from America, the country that had just defeated Japan. His sisters, Satsuki, Tomoe, and Junko didn’t want to go to school because they were also constantly teased and harassed. In order to protect his sisters, Mits took on the “number one bully” and beat him in a fight. From that day forward, Mits became the “number one bully.” He didn’t want the title but, at least, his sisters got to go to school without fear.

While he was in high school, Mits got drafted by the US Army by virtue of his California birth. Even though he was just a few months from graduation, Mits had to report immediately back to the States. It was 1954. By then Mits had forgotten much of his English. He survived boot camp at Fort Ord, California by falling in with some recruits from Hawaii, who were bilingual. When it came time to choose an assignment, Mits decided to become a paratrooper because it paid $50 more than the other available jobs. Based upon his choice, Mits was sent to Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The South was still segregated at the time. One of the things he remembered was that there was a drinking pipe for whites and a drinking pipe for blacks on the base. Mits didn’t know from which one to drink, so he took sips from both when no one was looking.

Mits jumped out of airplanes for 2 years. He recalled that the parachutes weren’t great, so all of his landings were hard. He joked that he was 5’11” before he became a paratrooper but left the Army at 5’7” due to all of those hard landings.

After his discharge, Mits went to SF to live with his mother. He got a job at American President Line. It was at that job that he met the love of his life, Kazuko Mineda. He liked to tell a tale in which he was in charge of a ship going back to Japan. Kazuko, who was a student at the time, was going home on that ship because she had finished her studies. Mits said that he canceled the trip, so the ship didn’t set sail as scheduled. He then proposed to Kazuko, who said, “yes.” They were married in 1969.

Mits then got out of the shipping business and into the restaurant business. He opened his iconic restaurant, Nikko, in 1974, using his house as collateral for the loan to start the business. Mits was ahead of his time with one of the City’s first sushi bars. Sushi was becoming popular in the 1970s as was Nikko, which became one of San Francisco’s premier Japanese restaurants. Celebrities, including members of Jefferson Airplane, Huey Lewis and the News, the Rolling Stones, and Mits’ beloved San Francisco Forty Niners, flocked to the corner of Van Ness and Pine. Unfortunately, all good things must to come to an end, so Nikko closed in 1986. Mits used his popularity to establish several new restaurants, including his current one, Moshi Moshi. Mits, was, once again, ahead of his time, picking the Dogpatch neighborhood well over a decade before the San Francisco Giants decided to build what was then PacBell Park down the road on 3rd Street. UCSF followed suit a few years later with its Mission Bay campus. The Golden State Warriors built Chase Center a short distance away just a couple of years ago. Soon Moshi Moshi grew to become one of the more popular Japanese restaurants in the City thanks to many old customers as well as many new ones. A celebration of life will be held at the restaurant from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. on December 4th for all who wish to pay their respects or raise a glass to toast Mits and his full and happy life.