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MA: And where did you move to next, after you lived in that area?

GY: Let's see. I think we lived uptown in a small rented house. We stayed there for a short while, and then we moved back downtown. We, my folks leased a World Hotel, which was, let's see... Two forty and a half West Main. It would have been two blocks in from Division Street, west of Division. And it was a forty-nine room walk-up hotel, forty-nine rooms, men only. It was a WPA and CCC bunch.

MA: Is that the Work Projects Administration?

GY: Work Projects Administration, and Civilian Conservation Corps. It was two different entities. And the WPA bunch, we had, used to rent rooms there for twenty-five cents inside room, thirty-five cents outside window room, and used to be one or two persons to a room. You know, I mean, friends probably shared a room, the expenses and all. However, when, during the early '30s, we had blister rust control, which is a blister rust, the pine beetles eating the trees. And the CCC and the WPA used to go into the woods to work in the timber. And quite often, the workers would come in, and my mother was the one that was working in the hotel, and my dad was working at Great Northern, so he wasn't home during this period, time element. And the WPA, CCC people would come in and give my mother, they used to call her Mama, you know, like I used to call my mother. And would give her a big steelhead trout that they somehow captured in the streams that they were working in, in the mountains. And I remember several instances where the steelhead were, it seems to me they were in the eight, ten, twelve pound range, large trout. And naturally we ate it. They were good enough to remember my mother and I guess we just all got along real well.

MA: Yeah, it sounds like it was kind of a good relationship between the people who stayed there and then your mother.

GY: Yes, yeah.

MA: I'm curious, did you work at the hotel as well?

GY: Oh, yeah. I was chambermaid during my high school years. Well, even grade school, too, for that matter. Helped make beds, and clean cuspidors because in those days people smoked or chewed tobacco. Changed sheets, of course, cleaned the toilets. [Laughs]

MA: And was this after you would go to school? Would you come to the hotel and do this, or on the weekends?

GY: Yeah, both ways, before or after, because we used to live in the hotel. That's where I used to walk to high school, and I recall throwing out those that were a little inebriated. I had to quiet them down, if they didn't quiet down I threw them out. So my mother would wake up the next morning and look at the records and see how much money was taken in during the night, which I was night clerk at times. And she would ask, "What happened to this gentleman?" I says, "Oh, I threw him out because he was drunk." And Mama would say, "He was probably our best customer. He always came in from the woods, stayed at hotel, never caused any problems." But anyway, they fired me after that. [Laughs] I think they got a night clerk.

MA: That's funny.

GY: Yeah.

MA: Did your, actually I was going ask you, how many siblings do you have?

GY: I have one other sister.

MA: And did she work at the hotel as well?

GY: No, no, Mitsuko, no, she didn't. She, I guess she was... what? '24, Hideko, '25, '26... '25 or '26 my sister was born, my last sister. And no, she didn't do anything in the hotel, not a thing.

MA: So it was mainly yourself and your mother?

GY: My mother, me and my dad.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.