<Begin Segment 30>

TI: And so, let's see, he's doing the body shop for a couple years, and then I understand he had an accident.

BH: Oh, yes. When he was painting, and while painting, the car was getting, being dried or something, 'cause he had a lamp that dried the place. So next door was a Chinese laundry, and on the top, I don't know how high it was, over ten feet, I guess, and there was a sign. Mr. Nomura... no, who was it? Oh, yes. Kaz Shoji, he was a... what do you call it? He did things like that, I've forgotten exactly what his job was. But he was having a struggle because he was trying to put this big board up there, 'cause the Chinese laundry wanted a sign put up. So he was working on that, and then he got up on the top, I think it was an eight-foot ladder, so they says, "Well, lift it up a little bit," so he kept pushing. And the ladder turned and fell, so he fell with it and he broke his arm. It was a compound fracture on his left arm. So he was laid up for a whole year, couldn't do anything.

TI: So he couldn't work at the auto shop anymore?

BH: No, he couldn't work anymore.

TI: So how was the family supported during this time?

BH: That's when we were having problems. So I went looking for a job because I'd never worked in my life, so I didn't know... but Paul had to stay home because he couldn't work at all with his left hand bandaged. Not bandaged but...

TI: In a cast?

BH: Cast, yeah. So I went out looking for a job, and I went downtown looking, to all the employment office. And the first thing they would ask is, "Have you had any experience?" I said, "No experience." He said, "Well, then we can't use you." I remember I went to the telephone company, everyplace around there, and they said all the same thing: "No job." And so then there was, on Jones Building on Third and, across from the post office, there was a building, and they had a couple of Japanese girls working there. It was supposed to be called International... International something, I forgot. But anyway, they take orders for different kind of things, like flowers and... I don't know what the main thing was. But anyway, I had the typing experience, so they hired me five dollars a week. No, five dollars a day. So every Saturday, Friday night, I'd get my twenty-five dollar check. That's what we used, ate on. But it was so monotonous, you know, a printed form and then all the blank spaces I had to write, type whatever they were selling at the time. Did that every day, looking at the wall, blank wall all day long. And that was Third and Union.

TI: And so while you worked, then Paul took care of the boys?

BH: Well, they were old enough. But it was Vincent that was still a baby. But he was, I think, able to walk, toddler, so he used to take that twenty-five dollars a day and said, "Don't spend more than five dollars a day," because you had to pay the rent and all that. So he'd take Vincent by his hand, and they'd walk up two blocks or something to a grocery store where he'd buy a half a pound of hamburger and I don't know what, potatoes.

TI: And so this happened, so you were struggling --

BH: Yeah, by that time I was, I was working. Before that, I worked at the laundry next door where the sign was, where Paul was working, right next to the shop. I worked there, that was also five dollars a day. It was a Chinese laundry, and they did all the hotel work, sheets and things like that. And it was hard work because it was a big place where they had to do all the laundry. And the people, one of the, laundry, did all the bad work, I mean, dirty work. All we did was come in and put it in a big long ironer, I guess, mangle, and the sheets would be coming out, and we had to take that and shake it. It'd take two people to do that, one on the other end. I did that, it was hot, it was, we had to fold it in such a way, and the others were coming one after the other. So it was hard work. But for five dollars a day.

TI: So you would have to work really hard to, essentially, make a hundred dollars a month.

BH: Uh-huh, and no... it was all five dollars cash, you didn't have to declare anything. Of course, I guess they did it. [Laughs]

<End Segment 30> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.