08/27/2026
Cold mochi ice cream was created by a woman born in hot Arizona desert.
On This Day — August 26, 1943
Frances Kazuko Hashimoto was born inside the Poston War Relocation Center in Arizona, one of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II.
Her family's story started decades before that. In 1910, her great-uncle Ryūzaburō Hashimoto opened Mikawaya, a small confectionery in what would become Los Angeles' Little Tokyo. Her parents, Koroku and Haru, later took over the shop, building a business rooted in traditional Japanese sweets. But in 1942, Executive Order 9066 authorized the forced removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast, and the store was closed as the family was sent to Poston, where Frances was born.
After the war, the Hashimotos returned to Los Angeles and reopened Mikawaya’s doors in December 1945. Frances grew up in Boyle Heights, earned a degree from USC, and taught elementary school before taking over the family business in 1970 at her mother’s urging.
Under her leadership, Mikawaya didn’t just survive. It transformed. In the early 1990s, Frances and her husband Joel Friedman began experimenting with a new idea: wrapping small scoops of ice cream in sweet mochi dough instead of the traditional red bean paste. The result became a dessert most Americans had never seen before and couldn’t stop eating once they had.
Mochi ice cream went on to reach grocery store freezers across the country, from Trader Joe’s to Whole Foods, introducing millions of people to a Japanese confection tradition that traces back centuries, filtered through a family business that had been rebuilt from nothing after incarceration.
Frances Hashimoto passed away in 2012, having spent her life preserving Little Tokyo’s culture as much as growing her family’s business. The dessert in your freezer aisle carries a piece of that history with it.
Love mochi ice cream? You can thank her.
