<Begin Segment 5>

TI: Going back to the hotel, it sounds like it was a fairly large building to have these functions in there.

HS: Oh, our place? Our restaurant would hold, there was a, our restaurant would hold probably about, I think it would hold at least 100 to 150 patrons when it, when they came in. You know, if you, every seat would taken up. They would have at least a hundred seats, but then it was, they had, I remember in a central area, there was about four or five tables that were large tables that had seats that went around them, about ten. And then they had booths. And I think the booths went up from one to... I know there was more than seven because they always, the booths were numbered. So it would be seven or eight booths, and each booth had, had another table with about six or eight in each booth. And then there was a counter that went onto the, on the other side of the main center tables, and that had chairs that, swivel chairs. And there'd be about twenty swivel chairs that people sat, and they would eat directly in front of the, in front of the counter. And behind the counter was where you had your... the old-time restaurant where you have the mirror in the back, and I think you still have some in Seattle, that type, mirror in the back. And you have your displays of what you have, and the menu and everything else behind there.

TI: Now, where would George be? He was the cook, would he be...

HS: George was always in the back. George used to wake up at five o'clock in the morning or earlier and start, start the day. My dad wouldn't get up until about ten or sometimes eleven o'clock, and he, George would go to, would leave about, oh, six o'clock or so in the evening, and go to bed about seven, and then he would -- or seven or eight, and he actually, they had a house about a block away, little over a block, about a block and a half, and they would, he would go home and go to bed at that time. My dad then would keep the restaurant open until, until closing time, which would be anywhere from about ten to eleven, and then he'd stay, he used to sit and read upstairs for another hour or so. So he would be, by twelve or past twelve before he went to bed. So he would sleep, sleep 'til about ten, and then George would wake up, so it was, the place was continually going. And it was never closed; it was never closed except for Christmas Day, and I think New Year's Day.

TI: What kind of food was served?

HS: It was Western food.

TI: So what would that be? What's Western food?

HS: Oh, everything Western: roast beef, pig hocks, hamburgers, steaks, stews. And George was a very good cook; his lemon pie was so good, lot of young Japanese -- in those days, they would be Niseis, a lot of them would come in after going to a movie or something, drop in to have a cup of coffee and apple pie and especially lemon pie. And of course, he did everything, he cooked everything, soups. When he first started, George actually came as a houseboy to Victoria in 1910, he arrived in 1910. He was a, he was a, you know, it would be pretty adventurous, because he was only fifteen years old when he arrived in Victoria. And he worked as a houseboy. Now, one of our friends in Victoria talks about this area in Victoria which is called the Uplands, where the big-monied people were with their big houses. And in one of those houses, she mentioned the fact that if you go downstairs, there's a room with a concrete bed, and she said, they had, they owned this house, and it was a concrete bed with a little room, and the comment was, "Oh, that's where the houseboy lived." And that's how George arrived, he was fifteen, he came as a houseboy, worked for some family, probably ended up -- I have no recollection as, or he never did say who he worked for. But one of the duties that he had to do was that he had to learn to cook, and he learned to cook Western food. And gradually he became a very good cook, so much so that when he left the internment camps -- we're talking about, you know, forty years later when the internment camp, we left -- he was hired by the Ritz-Carlton in Montreal, which is...

TI: To cook at the hotel.

HS: At the hotel. At the, that's the Ritz-Carlton hotel, that's way back later in 1947, but we're going back to, to the time when he was, he was my dad's partner. And he did the cooking, my dad did the running (of the hotel/restaurant).

TI: Well, I wanted to go back to the food, because you mentioned how the restaurant was kind of a hangout for a lot of the Japanese fishermen. Did he ever cook rice for them?

HS: No, no.

TI: Never did that.

HS: George did not know how to cook Japanese food; he never learned. I mean, he could probably cook rice, 'cause he was a good cook, he knew. But if he did cook rice, it was usually, it would be with, as a, as potatoes were, but he cooked more potatoes than he cooked rice. Potatoes was something that he could do, mashed potatoes and...

TI: Well, were there places in town, though, to get Japanese food?

HS: Japanese? No. There was no Japanese restaurants in those days. No Japanese restaurants. We're talking about 19', from about -- see, they started that restaurant in 1915, until we left Prince Rupert in '42, so that restaurant/hotel continued all through that period, all through the depression period. I mean, when things were really bad, and we still were able to, we're still, my dad was still able to exist, they were still able to make a living despite the fact that nobody had any money at that time. But we still had clients, and of course, when it really began to flourish was during World War II. Because World War II started in 1939, and by 1940, Prince Rupert had become one of the shipbuilding areas.

TI: Okay, before we go there, we'll come to that later.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.