Denver’s First Asian Market to Pass Business to a Fourth Generation

A History Lesson

After World War II, both Pacific Mercantile and Granada Fish Market opened in Denver. Granada Fish Market was opened by a former incarceree from the Amache concentration camp in southeast Colorado, who had helped run a fish market in the town of Granada that served both the townspeople and the camp’s prisoners.

Pacific Mercantile was opened by George Inai, who had been incarcerated with his family at Tule Lake in California and then at Topaz in Utah. He resettled after the war in Denver because of Colorado Governor Ralph Carr, who had opposed the incarceration of Japanese Americans.

With Governor Carr’s help, Inai, who had run a grocery in California before the war, opened Pacific Mercantile to serve not just the burgeoning Japanese American population, but also non-Japanese shoppers. Carr advised Inai to sell products that would appeal to all downtown Denverites, and suggested the name Pacific Mercantile instead of Nippon Market to minimize the lingering racism against the Japanese.

The store thrived and, alongside Granada Fish Market and the Tri-State Denver Buddhist Temple, was one of the hubs of the Japantown-like business district that stretched from 19th Street to past 30th, along Larimer and nearby blocks.

When urban renewal aimed to destroy most of Denver’s ethnic enclaves, the Japanese American community was able to raise the funds and get the permits to concentrate into the one-block plot of Sakura Square, hosting not just the church but a high-rise apartment building for Japanese American seniors called Tamai Towers, shops and restaurants. Pacific Mercantile became one of the anchors of Sakura Square.

The fish market eventually closed, but Pacific still serves its community and is preparing for the next chapter of Sakura Square, as the block gets redeveloped. The supermarket will be passed on to its fourth generation of family ownership, as Alyssa Noguchi, currently 33, who is prepared to take the reins from her mother, Jolie Noguchi, and her uncle, Kyle Nagai.

From the start, Pacific Mercantile was more than a store. It was a gathering place for families rebuilding their lives, a pantry of familiar foods brought from home, and a social hub for Japanese Americans and the broader Asian community arriving in Denver in the postwar years. It’s a must-visit after every Sunday service at the church next door, and a welcoming stop during every annual Cherry Blossom Festival at Sakura Square, for shave ice, Japanese candies and rice crackers.

Pacific Mercantile has stood as a quiet touchstone of continuity even as downtown Denver shifted and its new skyline sprang up around it. Inai’s four children — Naomi, Susie, Sam and Robert Inai — took the helm after his death in 1993, running the store through decades of change. The current owners, Kyle Nagai and Jolie Noguchi, are Susie’s children.

That intergenerational stewardship became Pacific Mercantile’s signature: a small business that kept culture and community constant.

The grandchildren of George Inai run the store today with a surprising mix of tradition and adaptability. Longtime customers drive from all over the state to stock up on Japanese goods like rice, fish and other groceries and dry goods. But it’s also a place where locals walk in for sushi and Japanese snacks.

And now, as the area around Sakura Square continues to evolve, the family is preparing for another transition: Alyssa Noguchi, Jolie and Alan Noguchi’s daughter (Alan is a constant presence at the store), and the great-granddaughter of the founder, is set to become the fourth-generation owner. Alyssa represents both continuity and change — steeped in family legacy while bringing a fresh perspective as consumer tastes morph and community identities shift.

Alyssa dreamed of being a dancer, and then studied merchandising for the fashion industry before she realized her future is to take over at Pacific Mercantile. “I really wanted to be part of Martha Graham’s company,” she says, but when she went to art school, she became disillusioned with dance as a career. “It just wasn’t what I thought, and I kind of lost my passion for it.”

She realized her passion was in the future of Pacific Mercantile, she says, “after my grandma passed away.”

“I’ll never forget – you came in and said, ‘Yeah, I think it’s time to talk about the business,’ recalls her proud mom. Alyssa began working behind the scenes in the business, helping her uncle with stocking and managing the books.

“I’m still learning,” Alyssa says. “Uncle Kyle’s put me in charge of more of the ordering. He still is doing some of it too, as much as he can, but I think he’s ready to just retire.” Nagai, at 65, has faced some health issues and has been in and out of the hospital, which has put more responsibility on Alyssa’s shoulders.

Jolie Noguchi agrees. “Yes, she was kind of thrown into the deep end, yep.” It didn’t help that importing goods was also complicated by the tariff war launched by Trump.

“It was more nerve-racking in the beginning, especially when I realized, oh, eventually this is going to just be me,” Alyssa admits. “But now that I’ve just kind of been thrown into it, it’s getting a little better; I’m not as nervous. It’s still stressful, though. I’m still really stressed every day.”

Looking Forward

Another source of stress is taking over from Jolie, who’s been the outgoing, friendly presence at Pacific now for decades, greeting so many customers by name and giving out hugs like penny candy. “I’m more like my uncle than my mom,” Alyssa admits. “I like to stay in the shadows. My mom loves being the face. She is the face of Pacific.”

New face or not, the future also brings uncertainty. Sakura Square has been slated for redevelopment for the better part of a decade, with applications for city funding finally moving forward after years of sputtering hopes and plans. That process will temporarily displace tenants and create new logistical challenges for a small family business anchored for generations in a single block. For Alyssa and her relatives, the question isn’t whether they have the grit to get through it — they do — but how to maintain the store’s cultural and emotional ties to the place that made it vital in the first place.

As the next generation to manage Pacific Mercantile, Alyssa Noguchi has visions she hopes to implement as part of the new Sakura Square, including obtaining a license to cook bentos in the shop and hosting cooking demonstrations and classes for a new generation of customers.

In a city that often measures progress in new glass towers and shiny retail corridors, Pacific Mercantile is a reminder that legacy is also a kind of infrastructure: networks of memory, taste, practice and trust that can’t be replaced once lost. When customers talk about learning to cook a favorite dish or finding a snack they haven’t seen since childhood, they’re talking about more than groceries. They’re talking about anchoring in community, about continuity and identity.

Alyssa knows this instinctively. She’ll be taking over not just a business but a set of relationships that span generations. And while the Sakura Square of tomorrow may look different, Pacific Mercantile’s capacity to endure — to evolve without losing its core — may well define the next chapter of Japanese American presence in Denver.