<Begin Segment 24>

AI: I think you mentioned also that during the '30s, that you had a, had worked in a restaurant for a while in Kent? With another woman whose... I'm sorry, maybe I made a mistake about that. Was that about also in the early 1930s?

PB: That was in, around '33, when my sister and I had a small restaurant, short-order place. We didn't really make it a very good business, we just... it was sort of a gathering place for young people. Just people came there, and we didn't make any money, we just tried it for a while. And I think the young people were having a lot of fun stealing things. We'd have mustard bowls and salt and pepper shakers, they all disappeared. They'd just take 'em just to tease us, I guess.

AI: Was that you and Fannie...

PB: Yes.

AI: ...who did the restaurant?

PB: But we had fun; we had a lot of young people come, and that's where I met the fellow that I intend to see again soon. I haven't seen him for seventy-some years.

AI: Oh, my.

PB: But he's here. He's alive; I didn't realize that he was alive, and he lives up in... let's see, where is that, where the ferry lands.

AI: Up near Edmonds?

PB: Edmonds, yes.

AI: Oh, how amazing. Well, well, it sounds like you did a number of things in the '30s. You ran the restaurant for a while with Fannie, you did the work at the Edris home for a while, and then, let's see... in an earlier conversation, I think you mentioned also that sometime in there, that you and Fannie had worked in a ladies' apparel shop. Was that the Lerners store?

PB: Lerners in downtown Seattle.

AI: Well, can you tell a little bit about how that happened? Because that, I think that might have been kind of unusual for a Japanese American to be hired in a downtown store.

PB: Well, it was because my sister was hired as a cashier. And in those days, the Japanese didn't get a job like a cashier. About the only jobs we could do was doing housework or waitress, or maybe operating a elevator or working downstairs putting tags on the clothing or something like that... wrapper. But my sister was hired as a cashier at Lerners, and, of course, right away there was a lot of objections, "How come she got that job?" So it was even taken to the headquarters in New York, and the company head said, "We will retain her." And she had that job, and later on, both my other sister and I, we both worked at Lerners, and three of us were working at Lerners. But, of course, we didn't work upstairs, we worked downstairs, usually doing wrapping or something like a minor job. But my sister was definitely a cashier, and she took the money to the bank. She even had a guard go with her, and she was established as a cashier, which was quite unusual in those days.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.