<Begin Segment 13>

TI: Okay, Art, so we're now into the second, second hour of this interview. And before I get to December 7, 1941, I wanted to ask you about your uncle, Jim, or James Sakamoto...

AA: Sure.

TI: ...who in Seattle Japanese, in Japanese American history, is a very prominent figure. He started a newspaper called the Courier, and was very prominent. And I wanted to ask you about your, sort of, experiences with Jim Sakamoto. So tell me a little bit about Jim Sakamoto. What was he like?

AA: Well, he was, he was a graduate of Franklin High School, and he was quite an athlete. He was on the football team, and I heard that he, Franklin was not very good at the time he was going, and he was the only who made a touchdown I guess, I don't know whether that's true or not. But then his father sent him to Princeton. And to make ends meet, he took up boxing, and he was boxing in Madison Square Garden in the preliminaries, and he got hit too many times in the head. That's when he lost his eyesight. And when he came back to Seattle, there wasn't a great deal of work he could do, so he started the Courier.

TI: Just so I understand, so at what point did he marry your, your aunt? Was this like before he went to Princeton or after?

AA: No, no, he married when he came back. I still remember the wedding. It was... this was after he had started, started the newspaper business.

TI: Okay, so he married your aunt, so he was already, this was after his boxing career, he was blind and had started the Courier.

AA: Yes.

TI: And so describe the wedding.

AA: Oh, they had the, I don't recall where the, where the ceremonies were, but they had a big reception at the place on Fourteenth on Fir, it used to be known as the Washington Hall, I believe.

AA: It's only a couple blocks away from here. And I still remember my, my aunt coming down to help decorate the place. We lived on Thirteenth and Alder at the time, it's just a couple of blocks away, so they used that as a staging ground. They used to drop by and get all the things, preparation, I remember watching them hang up all the crepe paper and things like that, and all the food that they brought in, and I used to eye all that.

TI: And how old were you when this was happening?

AA: I was in the second, about the second grade at the time.

TI: Okay.

AA: We weren't invited to the wedding, the kids were not. [Laughs]

TI: Oh, no. [Laughs]

AA: And I remember they had a big, big band that they had dancing afterwards. But at that time, I guess, I felt the whole Japanese community was down there at the reception.

TI: Because at this point, Jim Sakamoto was very prominent in the community.

AA: Oh, yes.

TI: Was it because of his boxing career, or was it because of the Courier?

AA: Because of his Courier. He had a lot of advertisers and all the, all the people that were involved in the sports, the coaches and all those people.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.