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BN: Did you notice... how had, I guess, how had Alameda changed over the time you were gone, or had it, from your perspective?

MT: Well, from my perspective, it hadn't changed too much. They were still very discriminatory, even all the people that came back, they finally bought houses, now they could buy houses in 1960-something, you could buy a house. But the children had grown, so they could better bring their children, so it was able to buy a house, but they would always show you houses that the real estate was, you didn't show Japanese a house north of, I guess north of Lincoln Avenue, you can't show west of this street. You couldn't show anybody, Japanese in the east end where my father put in all those clients, eastern side. But when I was... so in 1957, '59, I guess, '57 I got married, I got sent to Hawaii and came back. And in about 1961 or two, I guess they started to look for a home in Alameda. One year I couldn't find the house. They wouldn't show me a house, there'd be an open house, I would go in, and I put in our bid. And I called, and they would say, "We never got your bid." Real estate people just chuck it out. And I had my hakujin friends, by this time I had a lot of hakujin friends and we'd go in separately and they'd put in a bid and they would be always undermined. I'd tell them I'm going to bid this. They would get a call saying, "We got your bid," they wouldn't call me.

I went to the California Real Estate Association, real estate commission, I guess it was. And they said, "We don't, hard for me to believe you, Mr. Takano." I said, "Why?" He said, "The Blacks are always... the Japanese have never complained. You must be an anomaly." I said, "Hell, no, I've been doing this for over a year." And so we went around and around. There was one place I went in and it was an open house, I was the only one there, so I got to know the lady, and she said, "Give me a price," and she said, "And if you pay me a thousand dollars more, I'll leave the refrigerator and I'll leave the stove." And I looked at it and thought I'd have to junk it anyway, but that's okay. So you want total whatever it was. And he said, yes, I'll make a bid on it, she said, "Okay, fine." And I had a real estate guy, young guy, and he would be showing some of these homes and he would get blackballed, they would just run 'em up the flagpole and just rip them apart. And so he said, "I couldn't even get your bid in there," so I called him and he said, "Okay, fine, you talked to the owner?" I said, "Yeah." So he put the bid in and talked to the owner, put the bid in. And so the next day, Tuesday, I guess, I called my realtor and I said, "What happened to that house, what happened to the bid?" And he said, "We put it in and nothing happened." So I called the owner. I had her phone number and she said, "Oh, I remember you." She was a really nice lady. I said, "I made a bid," and she said, "I didn't get a bid that weekend at all." I said, "I gave you a bid that you wanted for the stove and the refrigerator. Do you remember that?" She said, "Oh, yeah, of course. You put a bid in for that?" I said, "I did put the whole thing in." She said, "That's odd." So then I went back to the commission again and I had all these papers put in. And they were shaking their head and they said, "We'll take them to court," which they did. But it takes, like, three months to get them to court. And they told, they warned me, they said, "We'll get them to court, but you're not going to get any action on this." All the numbers would be changed, it would be sold at a certain price, and that number will be changed. I said, "But that's okay, let's put the fear of God in them anyway." Then after that, I would run into the real estate people at homes and they would totally ignore me. I mean, they knew who I was. And my father was working for a man named Mr. Sunder and he was the owner of one of the biggest. So I went to see him earlier before the year, my first year, and I said to Mr. Sunder, "I need some help," and he said, "Sure, what do you need, Mr. Takano?" He knew who I was. And I said, "I can't find a house," and he said, "I'll have someone take care of you." Showed me the houses, the rinky-dink houses. So I went back to see him, he said, "How are you doing?" I said, "I can't find a house that I like." He said, "Let me talk to them." So he said, "Come back next week." I came back the next week, and I could see him and he had a glass in the back, you could see it. He wouldn't see me, would not see me.

BN: And this is, you're talking about the early '60s?

MT: Yeah, early '60s, early '60s, yeah, mid-'60s. And what happened was I would get the newspaper every day to see, and one day I was coming home from work, bought the local newspaper at the store, and I was looking at it, and there was a guy, new one in the Alameda newspaper, had bought, it was a new item, new entry. So I raced over there at the address, he was getting transferred to Seattle and he was a marine engineer. So I said, "Would you sell it to me?" I said, "Is this you?" He said, "Yeah." And said, "Where's the real estate agent?" He said, "There is no real estate agent, I want to sell it my myself." And I said, "Okay, would you sell it to me?" And he said, "Of course I would. What's your bid?" I said, "Your bid said, whatever it was, I'll pay that." He said, "Sure, you got it." I said, "You're telling me if I write you a check, you will accept it as a sale?" He said, "Absolutely, I'll write it down for the sale of this house." I gave him a check for five hundred dollars, I said, "Here." He looked at me and he said, "You haven't even gone through the house." And I said, "I went around the house before, and the yard was nice and the house was kept up." I said, "I'm sure the inside is clean." He and his father lived there. Okay by me. And so I got the house and boy, I tell you, when I was moving in, shades were all opening up. But you know, it's the real estate people. When we walked in the first day, the second day I had to go to, we cleaned the house. And then when I went to work that first day, after a week, then they brought a big fruit basket. And the guy across the street came over and he said, "I think you might want to take out, you were looking at some of those trees and you want to take 'em out?" I said, "I do." He said, "You let me know when you want to do it." So I said, "I don't need it." But the roots were big and I couldn't get it out. He came and walked across the street, it was a Saturday. Tried and tried, he said, "I can't get this dang thing out." He said, "Go in and have a beer, I'll be right back." Good thing we worked for the city, he brought a chain and a big truck, hooked it on there, yanked that thing right out, so they were all nice. So it was the people who, they don't care they were nice.

BN: More the real estate people.

MT: Real estate people. I was the first nonwhite to be east of Broadway.

BN: What year was this?

MT: 1964, I think.

BN: So as late as that.

MT: Late as that. No one else... I was the first nonwhite, and my daughter was the first nonwhite in that school, Otis school. So I was scared, I thought, "Are they going to beat up on her?" Kindergarten or first grade or whatever. But she was fine. I told my wife, if anybody gives you any stick, call me at the office. If anything happens, you call me, I'm going to put it up for sale and I'm going to sell it to some idiot, some nonwhite I'm going to sell it to. But anyway...

BN: How was it, I mean, how was it for other, like for Blacks or for other...

MT: Oh, that was the same thing. But now, I was the first to break the line there, and a lot of Japanese living in there now. And I saw a Black family in there. And you go to school, you could see the diverse student body now. Lot of Chinese. Alameda has a lot of Chinese.

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