<Begin Segment 8>

MA: You were telling me earlier that you used to travel to Seattle when you were young, and can you explain why you went to Seattle?

GY: My cousin used to live there in Seattle, oh, somewhere around Yesler Way, and I thought it was around Fourteenth and Yesler. But anyway, since my dad worked on the railroad, we had free passage, family. My mother, my sisters and me, we used to be able to travel free with this card. And we went to Seattle several different times. In my younger days, some lady here in town used to baby-sit. My mother would ask this lady to watch over, I was probably six, seven, eight years old, and she was a teenager, older teenager. And she watched over us during our ride to Seattle, and her father also worked on the railroad, too.

MA: So you would go by yourself without, I mean, without your parents?

GY: Me?

MA: Yeah.

GY: Oh, no. I was too young then. Years and years later I traveled by myself on the railroad, but generally speaking, it was, if I traveled it was either with my mother or some Nisei lady that used to baby-sit me, to Seattle.

MA: How typical was it for Niseis in Spokane to travel to Seattle and maybe Seattle people to travel to Spokane?

GY: Not, not difficult at all. We used to go to Seattle for the YPCC, what they called Young People's Christian Conference, which was Methodist, I believe. And they used to come to Spokane, Portland used to come to Spokane, we used to go to Portland and Seattle. Not too much Tacoma, Tacoma used to be part of the... oh yeah, I guess you did, we went to Tacoma, but that was, the YPCC was one of the bigger events for Nisei going to the coast, or having those people come over to Spokane.

MA: What were your impressions of Seattle when you would go over there?

GY: Oh, it was very, we used to go to Alki Beach, swim a lot. The water was bitterly cold as I remember. Yeah, we went to Seattle a lot. Sometimes we went to Rainier, Sick's Stadium on Rainier Avenue and watched baseball, and of course salmon fishing in the Sound. And I guess it was just that, went over there for Fourth of July. I remember popping firecrackers which was legal then. And yeah, from my uncle's back porch, I remember throwing firecrackers out, and one, one had a quick fuse and it blew up in my hand, split my fingernail. I can still see the scar from it. Fingernail comes out deformed slightly. But that was some of the fun that... it was always nice to go to Seattle.

MA: What do you remember about the Seattle Nihonmachi, I guess in comparison with the Spokane Japantown?

GY: Well, my cousin, my uncle, they were Buddhists, so we went to a lot of the Buddhist functions. And whenever there was a death in the Buddhist family, someone, I kind of remember the long, drawn-out affair; I got bored. Never understood what they were saying in Japanese, and it was one long affair, anyway. [Laughs]

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.