<Begin Segment 37>

TI: Any other memories or stories about Hastings Park before we move on?

HS: Well, I can remember one memory. Like I told you how we used to always jump out, or try to go out and get a Chinese meal or something. So different, to get a better meal than what we're getting inside the, inside Hastings Park. Harry and I would always arrange to go to a restaurant called Sun Peking in -- there was two, one was called Sun Nanking and the other one was called Sun Peking, right in Powell Street. And you could, for fifty cents, you could get a great big dish of chow mein and two bowls of rice, and you got the soup free, and tea. That all, that all came for fifty cents. And one, they, I said, okay, "I'll meet, meet, Harry, I'll meet you at the," we went, for some reason we had to get out at different times. It might have been one of the days when I, we jumped over the fence. Anyhow, somehow I got delayed to get out, and Harry had gone before me. He went to, he told me that we were going to Sun Peking, so I went there and I got, and I went into the door, I looked around for him. I couldn't find Harry, and all of a sudden his head poked up from one of the booths, and he motioned me over. And I went over there, and here he was, sort of in the middle, middle or the end of the meal all by himself. And he wanted me to give him, give him my twenty-five cents. I said, "Well, what'll I eat, then?" "Well," he said, "you could eat the leftovers, but I need the, I need your twenty-five cents." I said, "What happened?" He said, "Well, I was standing out here waiting for you, and this Japanese fellow came along and said, 'Are you going in for a meal?' 'Do you want to go in for a meal?'" And so Harry thought this guy was inviting him to come in and have a meal. So he sat down with him, the soup, everything arrived, soup, rice and the chow mein and tea, the guy drank the soup, ate his bowl of rice, and then gave Harry a nickel and said, "That's my portion. I'm not gonna touch the chow mein," and he left. So here was Harry, left with the, with only half the, only twenty-five cents, so he had to have my twenty-five cents so he could pay for the rest of that meal. And so I gave it to him, but I only got a portion of the meal because there was no longer any rice. Of course, everything had been eaten up by this other fellow. So anyhow, he was really upset about this Japanese man taking him in there, and he was, he had been completely fooled by this guy.

TI: So he was kind of conned by this guy.

HS: He was conned by this guy, yeah, and anyhow, that was one incident that I remember. Anyhow, we did spend six months there, my dad, what you might call ganbari as long as possible, and eventually he had to make a decision as to where we were gonna go. And he decided that we would go to New Denver. He also then, he left soon after that, after the decision was made, and went to New Denver to work on their work camps, to build the houses. They found out that despite all these old houses, there was still not enough room for (...)... in that valley, total, there must have been a, there had to be about, oh, twelve, twelve to fifteen thousand Japanese people.

<End Segment 37> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.