<Begin Segment 6>

TI: So you were talking about the farmers in Puyallup and Fife. So was your father's store kind of a nice gathering or meeting place for a lot of them?

HH: Yes, yes.

TI: So that when, if you went to your father's store back then, there'd usually be farmers, especially on maybe weekends or something.

HH: Especially weekends, yes.

TI: And gathering and talking. At this point, was your father's store a drugstore or a grocery store?

HH: No, drugstore.

TI: It was a drugstore. And what kind of things would he sell to the farmers?

HH: Well, just regular off-the-shelf type of cough drops, you know, for colds or whatever like that.

TI: So when you think of your father in this environment, was he a, like a good storyteller? Did the farmers like to come to his place because it was fun, or they were just there, because they would gather and stay there for a while. What was your father like?

HH: Well, my dad was really not too much in talking. But yes, but when they come into town, the farmers come into town, they would just come out for shopping and everything else, or go to the Japanese restaurants and whatever, if they were in town. And there was many shoe stores and watch repair and all that right around the, that Broadway area, which was more like a Little Japantown.

TI: So when you say Little Japantown, how many, can you recall how many Japanese businesses were kind of in that area?

HH: Well, quite a few were barbershops, and then tailors, and so I can't -- and also grocery stores. So that's where they came in to buy meats and anything like that that they need. But then a lot of it, my dad had to... because the farmers do not have enough cash really, during the year, until they harvest it and then they get their money then, it was mostly done on a credit-type system.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.