Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Mary Hamano Interview
Narrator: Mary Hamano
Interviewer: Megan Asaka
Location: Denver, Colorado
Date: May 14, 2008
Densho ID: denshovh-hmary_2-01-0006

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MA: Did you, at home during that time, what did your family do for fun? Like picnics?

MH: Well, my father didn't believe in cards, so we never played cards at all. Really we didn't do too much as entertainment at home. Because we didn't have a lot of facilities we do now. We didn't have a telephone for a long time, until my brother got sick and then he realized we needed a telephone. He got a telephone in the meantime. And then we also got a radio, which he was interested in Japanese baseball. In Japan, my father was interested in Japanese sumo and since the shortwave were coming in, that's when he decided we'd get a radio, a small radio. And that was about two years, maybe about a year and a half before the war started. So, and then on weekends, Sunday was our day to go to Japanese town and spend the day there. My day was to go see the Japanese movie house. And that was my only, because I didn't have any friends in the neighborhood that we could, I just had one girl next door, but she moved away soon after, about a few years later. So I was kind of alone there a lot. And so on Sunday was our day, except my mother, but my two brothers and my father, they all wanted to go to Japanese town and do their thing.

MA: Were you pretty close to Japantown?

MH: It was about, I would say three miles. Two or three.

MA: How would you get there?

MH: We had a car. By that time, we had our car, so we, we made an effort to go to town on Sunday and spend the afternoon there, and then come back about six o'clock. Well, my brothers, their entertainment was playing pool. Cause they had a friend that had a pool hall. And then across the street was a coffee shop where our family friend had, was running it. So, I would go to the Japanese movie, and then come back and my brothers would be over there to play. And my father was, he was taking some sort of lesson, like a singing lesson, I think it was, Japanese type of singing. And at five o'clock, we would have a, there was a noodle store next door to this coffee shop. We would have our snack there and then come home. So by the time five o'clock, or six o'clock, we were home, because my mother was left alone and we had to get home early. And that's all. Sunday was our entertainment. We didn't do anything in particular. And I had friends in Japanese town that I went around with, too. That was my only, there wasn't any girls around our neighborhood, you know. So that I could, except this one hakujin girl, you know, American girl. But she moved away, so...

MA: I wanted to ask you more about L.A.'s Japantown. And just what it was like, and the atmosphere there?

MH: It was, it was, that's where everybody went shopping because the Issei peoples couldn't speak English enough to go shopping to buy clothes for their family because it was, and most of them were farmers or people that did domestic work. And they couldn't get away to, and then not able to speak well enough to, to go to big places like Robinson's or whatever, those big department stores. So they had, they had little shops like a hat shop and purse shops. And they had several drugstores, a pharmacy, what we called pharmacies, but they were called drugstores. There was one place that had herbal things, and then we had the regular drugstore on one corner. But they furnished a lot of stuff from Japan like creams and lotions and soaps, and other things also. And so, and then they had a department store called Tomio, and that's where they had, basically they had everything. They had from ceramic stuff and they had dishes and they had material and ready-made clothes and things like that. And that was where they shopped. Because it was easier for them to shop there even it was a little more expensive than to go to a regular department store. They weren't able to travel that easily that way and not only that, their language was a big problem, I think. So that Japanese town was the hub for all Japanese people to do their shopping, their fish markets were there, the hardware was there, and all the sushis and manju places. You name it, they had it. And they even had a sewing school. Two schools. I went to one and there was another one also, called Modern Dress Making School, or something like that. And I went to Pacific Sewing School, and I graduated there in 1941 in June. And we were the last group to graduate from there. And then when that six months later. Well, in the meantime, before I got married, my husband was living there, too, and he was working for a restaurant.

MA: In Japantown?

MH: In Japantown. Before that he was living in Gardena and went to Gardena High School. After he came into, he also came from Japan, he was also raised in Japan, too. He got drafted six months before the war started, so he had a little bit different situation there.

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