<Begin Segment 4>

MA: Can you describe the atmosphere of the hotel? Was it rowdy, was it fun?

GY: No, it was pretty nice. Guys did drink, of course, they had wine bottles, beer bottles, and they were young men in transition. Jobs were scarce, and they were a pretty hard-working bunch. Several of the guys after the war went into college and graduated and I know they worked in Wenatchee, head telegrapher or something in the railroad end. But we never had that much of a problem. I do recall getting in fights with several big lumber, lumberjacks, but other than that, I thought it was pretty quiet. I did, one time -- we had two different hotels. We leased one from the mid-'30s, and let's see. I know we had it at Pearl Harbor, so after, in the early '40s or mid-'40s, we sold the lease and bought one downtown, right smack downtown, and it was not any more different, nicer or whatever, it just happened to be right in the middle of downtown, a block or two, a block away from Great Northern, Milwaukee, Union Pacific, SP& S, because the people would come off the trains and take a room at these various flophouses, so-called flophouses, which ours was one of them. But there happened to be a whole bunch of hotels in that area run by Japanese, and the people that came off the railroad, whether they were riding the rods or a paid passenger, would buy a room for the night or two or three. And that's where the business came from, primarily people traveling.

MA: And this was after... I mean, you talked about the, the blight in the wood that happened?

GY: Oh, well...

MA: Did you see a dropoff in those?

GY: After the war ended, I don't believe there was that much involvement in WPA or CCC. We did cater, and we did own the hotel for a number of years, but I think we eventually got out of it, and that must have been in the '50s, '60s. Yeah, we got out of it in the '60s, and dependent on my dad's work at Great Northern, apparently the wages came up quite a bit, you know, and he, we just sold off the hotels.

MA: So in the early days, though, it was more of those WPA, CCC workers.

GY: Uh-huh. And going back to WPA/CCC, the federal government, in order to pay for these roomers, WPA people or the CCCs, they, we started to put two and three to a room, in every room. And that way, the government had to pay for three or four people that, in each room, which made it more lucrative to be in the hotel business during that juncture.

MA: So the government paid for their lodging?

GY: Yes, yeah. I don't know, I'm pretty sure it was the government that paid for their housing. I don't know about the food, but I know it was for living, shelter anyway.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.