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MN: Now, I'm gonna go back a few months, when you came out by yourself, and you think you came out probably in the spring of 1945?

AM: Yeah.

MN: And then you had a job already lined up with your father's friend's photographer, is that correct?

AM: No, it was not my father's friend, but he happened to have a studio. Let's see, where was that? In the Compton area or some place, so I used to go over there, work over there doing retouching, which I learned while I was still in camp. So I was working there and that was a big help because I was able to do some, have a little income. And then when my father came back he decided maybe he should try to start a studio, so I helped, I helped my father get the studio started.

MN: Now, this first job you had after camp, was this with a hakujin photographer?

AM: Yes.

MN: And when you came back and visited Little Tokyo after you got out of camp, was Little Tokyo still called Little Tokyo, and what did it look like?

AM: It was all, Little Tokyo was not Little Tokyo anymore. It was called Bronzeville, and the reason for that is because lot of the people who lived in Bronzeville, Texas, and they were all mostly, they were all black people, so I was pretty shocked to see so many black people living in Little Tokyo. The reason for that is because there was a, quite a bit of housing shortage right after the war broke out, and then there were a lot of defense work coming up and so they were short on employees, so they recruited a lot of workers and then there were a lot of people in Bronzeville that needed jobs, so when they came to Southern California they looked for a place to live and then Little Tokyo they found was all vacant because all the Japanese moved out. So lot of the people from Bronzeville, Texas, moved into Little Tokyo and so it was called Bronzeville. And then when we came back, when I was there, after my father started the business, or just before he started the business, I was looking for a restroom and I knew where there was one because there used to be one latrine where -- back of First Street there was an area behind this building where there was a latrine -- so I ran over there and there was two houses. One is the house where I was born and there was another house, which is about thirty feet away, and there were only two houses there, so I knew there was houses there, so I thought, well, maybe if I go over there I could borrow their toilet. So I ran over there and I found the two houses were both gone, and in its place was swings and slides and things like that, and I looked around and there was a sign that said "Bronzeville Playground." The whole place was cleared out to become a Bronzeville playground. So I thought, oh my gosh, I thought I could see the house where I was born, but I was sure disappointed that it was all gone. That was a big shock to me because the way it changed so much.

MN: Now, when you were in Manzanar did you know that African Americans were living in Little Tokyo?

AM: No, I, nobody knew that, until we all came back and couldn't find any place to live, so naturally the first thing we did was go to Little Tokyo, or what used to be Little Tokyo, and found out that it was entirely different. And then as, as the war ended, slowly some of these people lost their jobs, so they were moving away, and so as they moved out, Japanese moved in, and so it was, I don't know how many years it took for the Japanese to become what it is now, Little Tokyo to what is now, but anyway, it took a while.

MN: Now, when the Japanese Americans were coming back from camp, was there tension between Japanese Americans and African Americans? Did African Americans feel like they were being pushed out?

AM: No. I didn't feel that at all, or I didn't notice it like that because I think these African Americans, they, they were losing jobs and they were looking for jobs elsewhere because they couldn't find any job around Little Tokyo, so they slowly started to move out. And as they moved out the Japanese people were able to move back in. Let's see, you know the corner of First and San Pedro I remember used to be a nightclub-like thing. I'm trying to think of the name.

MN: Cobra Club?

AM: Club Cobra, yeah. And that used to be a real active place, especially at night. But that place closed down because of lack of business because as the people moved out and slowly the Japanese people started to move back in.

MN: And you went into the Club Cobra a couple times to listen to bands, is that correct?

AM: Yes. There was a well known band, so I went in there. I forgot the name of the band, but anyway, I couldn't believe it when I heard it because I, only thing I, only way I heard their music was on the records. And then when I heard that this group was gonna be there I went in there to listen to them and, my gosh, it was really great.

MN: Could it be the Cement Mixers?

AM: No, it, they were one of the popular people, too, but I'm trying to think of the name. It wasn't the Cement Mixers, no.

MN: Can you describe what did the club, Club Cobra look like inside?

AM: Gee, it's something that I never expected to look like because I knew what the place was like before the war. It was a, I think it was just a drug store or something, and then they turned it into a nightclub, so it was hard to, for me to believe that it was a nightclub until I went inside to see what it was like. And I was just amazed at, when I, the change that they made in there. It didn't look anything like what it was before. It really looked like a nightclub.

MN: They had little tables, a stage?

AM: Yeah.

MN: Was the stage in the middle of the room or was it on one end of the, of the wall?

AM: No, it was on the one end of the wall, yeah. As you enter from First Street side it would be, you would be looking south and you could see the stage.

MN: Now, the audience, was it mostly African Americans or were there Japanese...

AM: Mostly African American, yeah.

MN: So when you went with your friends to go into this club were you folks the only Japanese Americans?

AM: Yeah, it could be. Yeah. There weren't too many Japanese going in there.

MN: How many times did you go into the Cobra Club?

AM: Only about once or twice, that's all.

MN: And was this the first time you heard a live band?

AM: Well, it wasn't the first time, but it was quite surprising to see what you hear on the record be playing up there in person. So it was really quite an excitement, yeah.

MN: Now, the Cobra Club also had the, a parking lot in the back and you used to see groups of African Americans playing dice out there.

AM: Well... yeah, well, when my father opened the studio it was about three doors east of the Cobra Club, and then there was a big parking area in the back of the studio, and then one day I went to the back and then I saw bunch of guys all crowded around into a circle and somebody right in the middle was rolling the dice and then I guess they were betting money on the dice. And what happened was somebody did something to get one person mad, so right away there was a big argument and fight. And my gosh, this guy actually brought out a knife and was about to stab him, and somebody stopped him and then, well, incident like that was sort of common in those days, so when I saw that happening right back of the studio I thought, oh my gosh, it's pretty bad, I was thinking. So I started being very careful from then on, especially at nighttime. Well, there were, you know, all kind of activities at nighttime, things going on, so you got to, you had to be pretty careful in Little Tokyo those days.

MN: Prostitution?

AM: Yeah.

MN: You saw the women walking around?

AM: Yeah. In fact, there was a little house few doors down in the back of the building facing First Street, behind it was a big parking area and there were two, three houses back there and it was a house of prostitution. So you could see some of these people walking and these girls that were dressed real skimpy and trying to attract men, that type of thing going on. So I thought, oh my God, what a wild place this is. So slowly those things started to disappear because the LAPD started clamping down because of, I guess the Japanese people must've been reporting these things going on, so as time went on those things became less and less. But for a while, right after we came back, the whole place was pretty wild, though. [Laughs]

MN: I've heard stories also where people used to just dump their trash out the window and so some of the returning Japanese Americans got into a habit of not walking next to the buildings. Is that something you remember?

AM: No, I don't recall anything like that, but that could've happened, sure. Yeah.

<End Segment 30> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.