<Begin Segment 6>

TI: And so here you're in a Caucasian -- because I think about walking around that neighborhood, and...

AA: It's mostly apartment house.

TI: Apartment houses, and if you go further north, you have nicer homes that way. And so tell me about the customers of the store. What were they like, who were they?

AA: Oh, most of 'em were working downtown. And in those days, not too many people had automobiles, so it was a short distance, about a mile downtown, so people used to walk downtown, and they lived in apartment. There were a few houses. Today, there's a lot more apartments up in that neighborhood, but those houses were torn down and new apartments went up.

TI: And so it sounds like most of your customers were kind of working-class...

AA: Working-class, yes.

TI: Lived in apartments. And how about your playmates growing up in this neighborhood? Who were they?

AA: Oh, they were all Caucasians. There were several Swedish and Norwegian kids I used to play around with.

TI: And so what kind of games would you guys play in the neighborhood?

AA: Oh, I didn't have that much time to play, 'cause I was working in, helping in the store all the time. And then I was involved in sports in school.

TI: So you can't recall, like, at night or something, just playing around or doing games with some of your friends in the streets?

AA: No, not at my... I had enough activities at school, so I didn't play around too much.

TI: So what school did you go to in that neighborhood?

AA: I went to Lowell. It was on Mercer and Federal Way.

TI: And how many other non-white or non-Caucasian students were at Lowell at this point?

AA: We were the only Japanese there. I remember later on, there was one Chinese family that came there.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.