Travel back again to 1968 and a small remarkable story related to that big wilderness that was the eastern downtown Minneapolis area leveled by urban renewal. Reiko Weston had operated her Japanese restaurant Fuji-Ya downtown on LaSalle since 1959. She dreamed of a restaurant near running water, a proper setting for a traditional Japanese restaurant. Somehow, she discovered and bought a property on the riverfront, to the east beyond the vast wasteland, on 1st street, a street that really went nowhere, south from the 3rd avenue bridge. Understand that the Minneapolis riverfront was run-down and undeveloped at that time, with ruins that were used by vagrants.

Reiko Weston saw the beauty of the location, hired an architect from Japan, and built a restaurant similar to many in Japan... plain on the outside, but offering a 250-seat, two level dining experience that included wonderful views of the river, the lock, and the famed old stone arch railroad bridge. The restaurant was constructed over, and integrated into, an old stone ruin. Fuji-Ya sat alone, unpretentious, but presenting to its diners a view that most of us had ignored or not even noticed as we busily drove nearby. She chose a place others had missed... she recognized a beauty we hadn't, and gave us a seat from which to learn and appreciate.

Over the next 20 years, for the mere price of a fine meal, the Fuji-Ya offered thousands of us that experience served as only the Japanese do. For me, it was like an hour transported back to Kyoto, but it was also much more; it was a discovery of the riverfront itself.

Looking back from now, I wonder what impetus the presence of the Fuji-Ya had toward producing the much later riverfront "renewal". There is no doubt that Reiko Weston led many of us there, and risked her livelihood and effort to lure us down a street that offered nothing else.

This is a story that deserves a happy ending, and Reiko deserved an honored place in city history. What actually happened was quite the opposite, and is a story that we MUST learn from if we hope to ever return to a society in which individuals are free from the arbitrary crushing power of government.

In 1987, the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board took most of the Fuji-Ya's parking, using their power of eminent domain. Reiko died in 1988, after 20 years on the riverfront. It's not hard for me to believe, as her daughter does, that the battle with the city led to her fatal heart attack at age 59. Doug Grow of the StarTribune recently wrote of that time and the pathetic continuing problems of the Park Board.

The Fuji-Ya building still stands, overlooking the river, it's broad windows covered with plywood. It has been Park Board property for 15 years now, and they have done nothing with it. It finally cost them $3.5 million in court, and has returned nothing, but it cost Reiko, her relatives, and her employees their dream. Tai San, chief chef, had been in the Fuji-Ya kitchen for 31 years. Reiko's daughter Carol was forced to finish the battle with the city after her mother's death. In April 1990, a StarTribune article by Chuck Haga quoted Carol:

"When we were in court to settle the terms with the Park Board and it was time to sign, I asked the judge if I could be excused for a minute. I went into another room and I bawled my eyes out. I felt like I had sold my mom out, her dreams. When I left the court that day, I felt that I didn't want to ever set foot in this restaurant again."

Think about the photo reproduced below. The small building in the lower right corner, with the brown and white bands, is the Fuji-Ya building. The residents of the expensive apartment building towering over it now have the river view Reiko offered to all of us.  The riverfront is a major development now. The big Mill City Museum is open, as are some businesses. The Guthrie theatre is moving downstream a bit. The Whitney Hotel, an earlier development of an old mill building, is already dead and will be converted to condos. All taxpayers have paid for the creation of the museum and much of the riverfront work, and will continue to pay for it as long as it lasts. You'll pay whether you use it or not. We'll all pay for it even if nobody uses it.

I love history. The milling era of Minneapolis celebrated by the museum is important history. It celebrates a time of great growth and innovation... of risk and investment. We would all do well to remind ourselves that all of that milling was done by a flourish of private companies and thousands of individual laborers. They worked in conditions we might now view as criminally dangerous, and lived in circumstances that would now be considered slummy. Had they been prevented from doing so, as they surely would be now, Minneapolis would never have become a center of milling. It's ironic that the government-supported museum celebrates the same sort of industry and lifestyles that governments have repeatedly destroyed in order to cater to the wealthy among us.

For my part, I will study the milling history in places outside the hypocrisy of such a public museum. I will also celebrate the history of a single woman's dream, along with many others that will never be widely known because they were crushed by governmental folks who don't know the difference between entrepreneurial creation versus building with money and property stolen from others.

I've created a website to remember the Fuji-Ya restaurant. I believe we must remember, and be always alert to stop such wanton destruction by government. Tomorrow, I'll challenge the attitudes and justifications that lead to such destruction.