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MA: So what are your thoughts on the Japanese American community today in Denver?

MH: I think they're dwindling. They're not, because the Issei people stuck together because they had no place else to go to entertain or to buy. And then as their kids grew up, they bought houses outskirts. And the older people all lived in this community, especially Larimer, Lawrence, Champa, Curtis, Stout. They all had, they all lived in that residential, between Seventeeth to Twenty-Seventh Street. Somewhere all in there. I lived on the Twenty-Seventh and Arapahoe when I got, the time when I was getting married, around that time. Once we lived down further, down at that end, near the Curtis Park. And I went to work down on Blake Street where this factory was. I walked. Well, we had streetcars, we didn't have buses, we had streetcars in those days. But I walked. When you're young, you can walk, it didn't matter to walk that far. It was good exercise, and it was good for you, too, on top of that to be movin', instead of riding, riding on the streetcar. And so I did that, and it, and you meet all kinds of people on the way. And Larimer street was called a slum area. It was horrible, it was terrible. But now it's become a very different area. They've taken all that old building away and they, that Windsor apartment used to be called Windsor Hotel. It was a famous hotel during the rush hour, during the gold rush days. And they say they had dollars, silver dollars all plastered on the walls or something like that. And they finally tore that down. It was very Victorian type of building, it was very famous at that time. They tore it down and now we have an apartment there called Windsor's apartment. It's a condo, condominium now. And this whole Larimer Street is completely changed. Japanese town, our Sakura Square is just only one block of it.

MA: So it used to be much larger.

MH: It had, and it was across the street. There's the whole up to Market Street. And then of course between Nineteenth and Twenty, there's between Larimer and Lawrence and then Market, there's two blocks there. So that two whole, four blocks of it was just Japanese stores, restaurants, insurance company, hairdresser, barber shop. You name it, we had it all there. So you didn't have to go very far. And of course, the shopping center on Sixteenth Street was the main shopping area. That's where the May Company and the Daniel Fisher's and all the big stores were down. Eventually, they all died. There's nothing left there anymore. We have Woolworth's, we used to call five and ten cents store, Crest's, Woolworth's. They're all gone. Nothing is there. Even the famous shoe store, Fanta shoe store, Florsheim's men's shoe store, they were all down in there, but it's all gone. The only thing that's left on Sixteenth Street that was almost original is the Daniel Fisher Tower where the clock is. That's, the tower only is left. The building, the whole block is gone where the shopping. They had furniture, they had everything. Flower shop and gift shop. All kinds. And they had so many floors. Every floor had a different item like women's wear, menswear, furniture. And it's all gone. They just saved that as, the tower as just a memento left. And then eventually, May Company came along. They call it May D&F, but it's, that was original Daniel Fisher store. A well-known store.

MA: So Sakura Square is, seems like what's left of Japantown.

MH: Japantown is what we have now. They tried to save that corner as Sakura Square. That's why they call it the Sakura Square, because cherry blossom festival is our main thing. And it used to be in May, but the weather was so unpredictable, then so they changed it to June because then the ballpark came along. And our schedule got, we have to work around when they don't have baseball, because the parking is a difficulty there. And they use the Sakura Square for parking, the baseball people use it as their closest they can to use it for parking too. So we need that area. And so we have to wait 'til, we have to know when they're not at home to play, we use that as our time to use as Sakura Matsuri, Cherry Blossom Day. So from Twenty-Third to Sunday, we have two days of it. And then Saturday, we have obon dance which is supposed to be done in July, but there we have baseball again, so we can't go according to that schedule. So everything is pushed into Cherry Blossom.

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.