Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Mitsuye May Yamada - Joe Yasutake - Tosh Yasutake Interview
Narrators: Mitsuye May Yamada, Joe Yasutake, Tosh Yasutake
Interviewers: Alice Ito (primary), Jeni Yamada (secondary)
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: October 8 & 9, 2002
Densho ID: denshovh-ymitsuye_g-01-0005

<Begin Segment 5>

AI: And so then your father began working at Immigration Service down at the Immigration Station here in Seattle in 1921. And then you were born in -- Tosh, in --

TY: '22.

AI: -- 1922.

TY: So I --

MY: So you must have --

TY: I guess he must have, he must have stayed up in Beacon Hill -- that first Beacon Hill house, until he got the job with the immigration office.

MY: Oh, yeah.

TY: And then he moved on to the other house.

JY: I didn't even know about the first Beacon Hill house. That's news to me.

TY: That's the one that Mike was born in.

TY: Is that right?

MY: Uh-huh.

TY: Yeah.

JY: Huh. I always thought -- I always heard about Remington Court and all that, and I thought those were the first --

MY: The one across the street, yeah.

JY: Yeah.

MY: So the first house that, that they bought was the one that they bought in 193- --

JY: '3?

MY: No.

JY: '32? '32?

MY: No, after -- no, that was before you, you were born in '32. It was 1931 --

TY: '31.

MY: -- they bought the house up in Beacon Hill.

TY: Beacon Hill, yeah.

MY: And, and it was the first house, I think, that they purchased. I think there was --

JY: Under, under Mrs. Hoben's name.

TY: I think he bought -- as I remember, Dad told me that, that he paid three thousand dollars for that house.

JY: Is that right?

TY: Yeah.

JY: I'll be darned.

MY: I, I think I have the, the deed --

TY: Paperwork?

MY: -- yeah, on that.

TY: But that Miss --

MY: Mrs. Hob-, Sarah Hoben.

TY: Hoben, yeah. Mrs. Hoben.

MY: Yeah, she would, the telephone operator at the Immigration Service became a good friend of my dad -- our dad. And she agreed to buy the house in her name.

JY: Oh, put the house under her name?

MY: Put the house under her name, and then my dad, you know, paid for --

TY: And then --

MY: And then when Mike --

TY: Became twenty -- eighteen, they transferred the house over to him.

MY: Ownership of the house to Mike.

TY: For one dollar or two dollars.

JY: He could do that when he was eighteen? He didn't have to be twenty-one?

TY: Well, he couldn't have been twenty-one because I was twenty, went to war.

JY: It was already started.

TY: This is 1932, or so.

JY: He must have been, eighteen must have been legal age then, in those days.

TY: Yeah, I think so. I think it was eighteen.

JY: Huh.

TY: And they signed the house over to him then, after that.

MY: Yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.