Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Tad Kuniyuki Interview
Narrator: Tad Kuniyuki
Interviewers: Tom Ikeda, Shin Yu Pai
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: October 28, 2008
Densho ID: denshovh-ktad-01-0021

<Begin Segment 21>

TI: How was business affected after Pearl Harbor?

TK: I don't think there was that much difference.

TI: So this was the hotel at Seventh and Virginia, so it's the Wiltshire Hotel. About how many rooms did this hotel have?

TK: I think it had a hundred rooms. Maybe a hundred five, around there.

TI: And normally, how many of those rooms are busy or used in a night?

TK: Gosh, I don't know. Well, at least three quarters must have to be full.

TI: Okay, so roughly seventy to eighty rooms occupied. Who would be the tenants? Who would be in these rooms?

TK: Well, I don't know about the regulars, the regulars were, as far as I know, remember, is waitresses, that worked around there. And I know one schoolteacher. And I don't know what the others did.

TI: Oh, so working-class people.

TK: Working-class people, yeah.

TI: Mostly Caucasian?

TK: Yeah, practically all Caucasians.

TI: And you didn't experience, with your tenants, the people there, they didn't make any comments about the war, or ask you any questions?

TK: No, nobody said anything.

TI: Okay. So it's a large hotel. In the months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the government started telling Japanese that they would have to leave Seattle. What did you do with the hotel?

TK: Gosh, I don't remember. My brother and father, parents were taking care of most of that. So I don't remember just exactly what we did. Well, my brother was taken into the army, too. So I guess we just started to pack up, we were told to leave. We just started to pack up, I guess.

TI: This hotel was owned by your parents, or the family.

TK: Just the business part.

TI: The business part. So as the business part, what happened to that?

TK: Oh, some lady came, we were very fortunate in that way, there was a lady, we had, my brother's girlfriend had a, was working for a lawyer, and this lawyer took care of all the business end of it. And so we were very, very fortunate there. So he dealt with all the paperwork of taking care of changing the business ownership and all that. I forgot now what exactly happened now. It was very big. But we, so we didn't lose anything. Although some Chinese fellow took over the business, and he wasn't a very good fellow, but he was married to a Japanese girl. I don't remember what happened after that.

TI: So from my notes, it was your brother's girlfriend worked for an attorney named Hutchinson?

TK: Yeah, Hutchinson.

TI: And he was able to...

TK: He took care of all of it.

TI: Took care of it, was actually able to sell the business. At pretty close to market rates, so it wasn't like you had to...

TK: Yeah, I think so, everything was on the, I think everything was fair, as far as I can tell. I wasn't too much involved in it. So my brother and the parents were involved in it.

TI: Okay, good. You were fortunate, because many families lost a lot during that time.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.