<Begin Segment 16>

TI: So returning back to the United States, were your parents still in Ellensburg at this point?

MH: Oh, yeah.

TI: Or were they back in Seattle?

MH: We came back, I came back -- oh, no, they were in Seattle by that time. And my mother had gotten tuberculosis and she was in Riverton sanitarium, and my dad, my two sisters, brother and I lived in a house on Seventeenth and... we rented a house on Seventeenth and what's the street this side of Yesler? Alder or something like that. And so it must have been right up here someplace. My mother was in the sanitarium, so when evacuation came, it's just us went.

TI: And so you returned to Seattle because of the tuberculosis of your mother? Is that why?

MH: No... oh, so my dad had, had gotten out of that lousy hotel and restaurant business, and he rented another hotel right in town in Ellensburg, which was a much better place. And so when my brother, who has eight children, when he was having a hard time...

TI: This was your older brother?

MH: My older brother, Yonesaku. When he was having a hard time making a living, he was in the... what do you call them when they fix cars?

TI: Like a mechanic?

MH: The wrecked cars, they straighten them out.

TI: Oh...

MH: Anyway, that was his business.

TI: Re-builder or...

MH: Yeah, that was his business. He had gone three years to the university as an aeronautical engineer. He didn't finish. If he had finished, he would have had a good living, but then without finishing, he went to the camp and had all these kids, moved in, moved to Spokane, and then he couldn't make a living, so my father told him, "You could have this hotel. You run this hotel because it's going well, and I'll go to Seattle." So we moved out to Seattle, and he ran a dumpy place on James, James and about Sixth or Seventh Avenue and James. It was really a terrible place, and so, so we were back here, and we had to leave my mother when we were evacuated.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.