A hole-in-the-wall Italian restaurant now resides in a home in Onojo, Fukuoka Prefecture, where an American family stationed at a nearby former U.S. military base once lived.

Sumi to Budo opened within a renovated home built seven or so decades ago near JR Onojo Station in 2019. Its manager, Toshiya Hattori, 40, said he liked the building's appearance. 

“There are only large apartment buildings nearby,” said Hattori. “For that reason, I decided to rent this old-fashioned house because it would stand out from them.”

Hattori intentionally left the brick foundation of his eatery exposed. A succession of people has become interested in the rare design, stopped at the restaurant and become regular customers.

Previous homes for service members stationed at the former site of Itazuke Air Base, most of which was returned to Japan half a century ago, are keeping memories of those bygone days from fading among locals.

Dotting the region around the former base, many of the American-style residences have been converted into a restaurant and accommodation facilities over a wide area.

Onojo city in the prefecture is inspecting all the structures that remain in existence in the municipality, while a memorial event is scheduled for autumn to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the base’s reversion to Japan.

HOMES RETAIN AMERICAN-LIKE ARCHITECTURE

After he started operating his restaurant, Hattori became aware that many buildings that appear to have served as residences for U.S. personnel and their families sit in his neighborhood.

Hattori said “a home behind is one” such structure, referring to an American-style architecture with four rooms along with a living space, dining area and kitchen. It is used by Kyoko Kobayashi, 64, who runs an art school, as her studio.

Kobayashi said what convinced her to lease the house was the building’s high ceiling, which is as much as 30 centimeters taller than that of ordinary Japanese residences.

The interior was suited to working on larger artistic productions standing 160 cm high. As the structure showed signs of aging, Kobayashi repainted it in blue with its original appearance retained.

During her student days, Kobayashi dreamed of traveling to other countries.

“Homes colored green and blue around what currently is JR Kasuga Station seemed lovely,” Kobayashi said about the America-like landscape she would see through a train window.

Some former houses of U.S. families are being utilized as hotels. Among them is Brady House Saitozaki, an accommodation facility that started operations in the Saitozaki district of Fukuoka’s Higashi Ward in 2019.

Brady House Saitozaki consists of three one-story buildings sitting next to each other, and their exteriors appear as they were when completed some 70 years ago.

Finding the old structures left unoccupied, Koji Tanaka, 56, who runs Brady House Saitozaki, saw it as “regrettable for them to fall into decay with no preventive measures being taken.”

Tanaka, who was raised nearby and would sneak into the former base site as a small child to play, was so attached to the U.S.-style buildings that he hit upon the idea of utilizing them “for local revitalization."

PRESERVED FOR MEMORIES, NOT FOR CULTURAL VALUE

The sprawling Itazuke Air Base comprised the current-day Fukuoka Airport, the Kasugabaru residential zone, Brady Air Base and many other adjunct establishments.

Service members' homes were initially constructed inside the base. As more U.S. personnel were deployed there after the Korean War broke out, the owners of land outside the base were asked to provide extra accommodations to make up for the residential shortage.

Built around that time, the off-base homes remain in such cities as Onojo, Kasuga and Fukuoka.

The base’s department responsible for the project ensured that flooring, Western-style flush toilets, showers and other fittings met the U.S. criteria. There were 1,200 such houses built during the peak period.

The U.S. side paid much money for accommodations at the time, according to Tomoko Yamamura, an official from the Onojo Cocoro-no-furusato-kan City Museum, which is looking into all the 50 off-base homes in Onojo.

“The rents (of off-base residences) were three to four times higher than those for homes targeting Japanese,” Yamamura said.

Masumi Ikeda, 74, a resident of Onojo’s Otogana district, said her father took out a loan from a bank to erect two American-like houses in his farming fields in front of his residence.

“My father told me he was able to pay off his loan in an instant,” said Ikeda.

Ikeda worked part time as a babysitter for a U.S. military officer’s family who lived across from her home. She threatened in English to spank a misbehaving child’s bottom like the mother, so the naughty brat became silent.

The former homes of American families are full of fond memories, and they are kept as they were even today.

A group called the Kasuga Off-Base House Society was founded in 2014 to preserve American-style buildings. Of 580 homes constructed in Kasuga and Onojo, an estimated 100 are thought to still remain.

“They (the homes) may not have a high cultural value, but we want to preserve our town’s memories,” said Hidetaka Nakano, 60, head of the group.

The Onojo Cocoro-no-furusato-kan City Museum is expected to hold an exhibition themed on the U.S.-like townscape that used to exist in the local community from Sept. 13 through Nov. 6 in the hope of displaying its traces.