Densho Digital Archive - Mary Hamano Interview (denshovh-hmary

<Begin Segment 11>

MA: When did you start your sewing school at Pacific?

MH: Right after I graduated.

MA: So in 1940?

MH: I, I started, yeah, about a few months after I finished school. So, I went to the whole year. I graduated in '41 in June. That was the last...

MA: Was the school in Japantown?

MH: Yeah, uh-huh. It was right up, right by where the Koyasan Temple is. It's right in front, the Koyasan Temple's in the back. And there's a driveway like. And there was two buildings. One was, had a manju store there and then this side was a shoe repair, then upstairs was the sewing school. We had a Japanese theater like I said, and one theater and several Chinese restaurant. And then Japanese restaurant. When they have a party, it's always a Chinese place, 'cause they had the big areas. So eating Chinese food in those days, what we eat here, Chinese food is different. We can't find, we're used to chow mein dinner, we, we figured the kind we ate back then, it's not the kind we eat now.

MA: How is it different?

MH: It's different. Totally different. They use rice noodles and it's totally different. When we say chow mein dinner, they used regular chow mein noodle and they pan fried it and all the veggies and stuff, it was piled on top, and it was what we called chow, chow mein dinner. But this, this modern right now, it's just totally different. And then we used to call hamayu, it's made out of pork, steamed pork. With some kind of a fish, and it's smelly. But it tastes, that flavor goes into this pork, and it's very good. It's steamed. It's nothing but fat, pork fat is what it is. But you asked these people now, they don't even know what it is, and you have to make your own. You can make your own, but it doesn't taste like the one you would eat at a restaurant, you know?

MA: So the food has changed a lot. The Chinese food especially.

MH: Well now, see, I think the Chinese food now has a mixture of Vietnamese, Thai, and all the other Asian country dishes are all put together, combined. And so it's not the kind what we used to find in those days. So it's very different in taste and they're more spicier now than they were then. They weren't so, they weren't spicy in those day. So food, it's so much different, and they don't, they don't use the same ingredients either. A lot of it. They're similar, but because Thai people have their type of food, and Vietnamese have their type of vegetables they use, too, and the noodles are all different.