<Begin Segment 6>

MA: So your father ran a hotel, is that right?

SE: Uh-huh.

MA: Around when did he acquire this hotel?

SE: In 1932, I think it was.

MA: So you were thirteen?

SE: Yeah, getting ready to go to high school, yeah.

MA: And what was the name of the hotel?

SE: U.S. Hotel there on Maynard, between Jackson and Main, across from the chamber of commerce.

MA: Oh, so right in the...

SE: Yeah, near Tokyo Cafe, in that area.

MA: And can you describe the hotel? What did it look like on the inside? How big was it, how many rooms?

SE: It had a total of... we thought it was hundred rooms. You know, when Dad was in, always was in real estate, and that was one of the buildings that he helped in the building of it at the... way back, I don't know when it was. And so when the man that was running it was afraid that there was going to be a Japanese-Manchurian war, he left the United States and went back to Japan, and he thought he owed a lot of money, he owed the laundry and I think the oil company that furnished the... so Dad assumed the bill, the debt, and so he didn't have any cash transaction, he just assumed the debts.

MA: I see. So he took it over from his friend who left to go back to Japan.

SE: Uh-huh.

MA: And how big was the hotel?

SE: It's got a hundred rooms. You know, right downtown there, across from the chamber of commerce, it's right there. It's still called, it still has the sign U.S. Hotel, however, it's apartments, now.

MA: And what, how much did your father charge for, like, one night accommodation?

SE: Rooms that were on the insides were fifty cents, and seventy-five cents a night for the outside rooms. And the clients were mostly train porters and train waiters, both waiters and porters, and so they were all blacks, but they were very clean and orderly, because, because of the type of jobs they had. So they weren't like the blacks that were around on the streets in Seattle.

MA: Around the hotel area?

SE: Well, generally on the streets. Because at the hotel, I think the hotel to the north of us was a Japanese-owned hotel, but I don't know if they did have very many overnighters, people that stayed by the month.

MA: So the porters and people that stayed in your father's hotel, in the U.S. Hotel, they weren't from Seattle?

SE: No.

MA: So they were, like, stopping over to rest?

SE: Uh-huh. Mostly from the Midwest or California, Los Angeles.

MA: What were the interactions like between, I mean, these African American porters and then your family and then the other Japanese residents?

SE: Oh, I don't know. Accepted, you know. They called Dad "Papa-san" and Mother "Mama-san."

MA: So it was pretty common, then, for, like, a Japanese-operated hotel to have a bunch of different types of ethnic groups in the, staying in the hotel?

SE: Yes. But because it was mainly train porters and waiters, it was mostly blacks and then a few Japanese lived there regularly, you know. There was a Japanese lady and her husband that lived there, that she had a beauty shop on Jackson Street, and she lived there and so did one of her girls that did the hair, she lived at our hotel.

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