<Begin Segment 32>

LH: Your family was one of the first two that came back to Seattle in 1945, early 1945.

FG: Yes.

LH: When more and more Japanese families started coming back, how did that change the way Seattle reacted and also how did your family welcome people back?

FG: Well, one of the things that the WRA had asked us is if we had any space, any room, and we had extra rooms so we opened it up to, or we accepted whoever that needed housing. And it wasn't really large enough for families so what we did was we had single men, and I think we had two, about two at a time or something. And there was one gentleman and they were usually a little older. They were older than my father too, but one gentleman he came and stayed with us. I think in about, it was around nineteen forty... he came to us about 1948, I think, and he was with us. And then we moved, but he stayed with us and he lived with us 'til he died in, I think it was '53.

LH: And what did this gentleman do for a living?

FG: Well, he was retired. He was a retired seaman and he took care of my brother as he was growing up. I mean, he took care of him. He made sure that, he made sure he knew where he was and everything, and he kind of puttered around in the yard. And then every, twice a week he would go down to Chinatown because it was, and he'd go to WahMei, the gambling place, and that's what he did for a living. But he was retired so he didn't have...

LH: But this was just a gentleman who had come to live with you sort of to get back on his feet and ended living with you for five, six years almost.

FG: Right.

LH: What was it like though having these single men come and live in your house, maybe stay for a couple months and leave and then have other people come in?

FG: I don't know. Our house was always a hostel anyway because as I was, when I was growing up we always had somebody living with us. It was somebody's family living with us and the larger the house, the more families we had. Let's see. At one time we had two families living with us.

LH: Really?

FG: And then that was like in the early '50s and then when I was a senior in high school and then from then and when I was in college then we always had... oh, actually we always did have people from Japan living with us like my cousins and things. My cousins came and lived with us and then sometimes my father always hired or gave work to the foreign student, the Japanese foreign students, because they had a hard time making ends meet because they couldn't really bring very much money at that time and yet they needed employment. One of the people that employ them was Gyokkoken, the restaurants down on Main Street. Many of the students worked in the restaurants as waiters and so they either worked as waiters in restaurants or they were gardening. So my father used to have them work for him for years and years.

LH: So this was how, again, he would have these connections to Japan.

FG: Uh-huh.

<End Segment 32> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.