<Begin Segment 7>

TI: But going back to where you lived, it was Eighteenth and King. Were there very many other Japanese families in that neighborhood?

MH: Well, there was not when we moved up. There was an Italian family next door, but later there was a Chinese family that moved up the street, and then I think the Imai, was that a pharmacy that was here, they moved up. And then the Hirade family moved right on Eighteenth Avenue towards Weller, and the Shiga family. Andy Shiga had a thing in University District, they moved there. And then down towards Lane, is it, was the Yanagimachi family. So they moved up a little after we did.

TI: So as they were moving in, what kind of families were they replacing? I mean, who, who was moving out? Who was there before?

MH: I don't remember.

TI: Was, but was it mostly Caucasian in that --

MH: Uh-huh. They were all Caucasians, yeah. There were very few Japanese up there.

TI: And so in growing up, did you have non-Japanese American playmates?

MH: Oh, yes. We went to school with mostly Jewish people, and there was just one black girl in the class, and our immediate neighbors that we played with, mostly Japanese, yeah. Then later the Yamauras moved up, and several, so, yeah, it was Japanese.

TI: Can you remember some of the games that you played in the neighborhood?

MH: Oh, yeah. We'd gather, especially on the corner of Weller and Eighteenth, there's a quiet corner, and we used to play Pom-pom Pull Away, and Hide-and-Seek, and the boys used to play a little baseball, very little. And then in the wintertime there's a very steep hill on Weller, going next to the Shiga house. We used to sled down that place. That was, that was really something we looked forward to. So the neighborhood kids did get together and we played.

TI: And so when you say, "neighborhood kids," about how many kids would get together?

MH: Let's see. Yanagimachis had a family of... but the ones that were all my age and a little bit younger, I would say there were twelve. Two, four... yeah, about twelve of us, boys and girls mixed up. Yeah, that's it. And you know, there was a house being built for the... oh, the one that used to work at the Hara Drugstore right here, there was a Hara Drugstore right on Twelfth and Yesler. Anyway, they built a beautiful house, and so we used to go and climb up and walk the things while it was being built. And then, at about age fifteen, the girls got together, and we decided we were gonna start a club, just the Japanese girls. And we'd sit in a field of dandelions, and we'd pick the dandelions and we'd make chains. So we said, "Oh, let's call it the Dandelion Club," and we joined the Child Life Magazine. They had a Good Citizens Club that they, that they wanted the young people to join. So we joined this Good Citizens Club that the Child Life Magazine was running, and then we girls used to get together and we'd tell stories or exchange stories and make dandelion chains. And so then in those days, our parents used to have bazaars at the church, so we said, "Oh, let's have a bazaar." So we had a bazaar in the Yamaura yard, and our parents came. My mother helped by making some sushi, and I came down to Rainier Avenue, there was a cookie, cookie factory there. I'd buy the broken cookies and package them up and sold them. And, you know, we did, we were pretty enterprising. And the parents were very good, they helped out, they came and bought stuff, and I think we made a few handmade things. So that was when we were teenagers.

TI: And how large was that girl's club?

MH: This girl's group was about eight of us. And then we put our money into the Sumitomo Bank, then it went broke and we lost our twelve dollars that we'd put into the bank, and then the evacuation came. And so we thought we had lost that money. Then I got a letter from one of the girls and said, "Sumitomo Bank says that they'll give us our twelve dollars, what shall I do with it?" And I said, "Go out and get yourself a hamburger or something." [Laughs]

TI: That's funny.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.