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TI: So I'm curious. Going back to, in the summertime or spring, you're in Bellevue working on the farm. When you're in Seattle in the wintertime, what kind of activities did you do?

BH: My father's sister ran a hotel where the parking lot is on Main and... was it between Sixth and Seventh, right behind the Panama Hotel? There used to be an old rooming house there. And I remember every winter, because my aunt, my father's sister kind of managed it, so we used to come and stay in Seattle all the time. That's why I was born in Seattle. I was born up there by the old... what was that place now? What was that place?

TI: That's okay.

BH: Nippon Kan Hall.

TI: Oh, sure. Actually, my wife and I got married there. So that's kind of a special place.

BH: There was a house, there used to be a lot of old houses now, I don't think there's any remaining but there used to have two doors and one goes upstairs, one on the main floor, one of those places up there. Right near, it must have been the top of the hill there, Seventh or Eighth Avenue, isn't it, up there.

TI: So in the wintertime, at first I thought you guys were resting, but actually, you guys were working. So you could work kind of helping out with the hotel, things like that.

BH: I don't think so. We just lived there, but I don't know what my father was doing at that time. He was living there, too, but I mean, what kind of work he was doing, I don't know.

TI: Now, growing up, did you have a preference between living in Bellevue or living in Seattle? 'Cause they were such different types of places.

BH: I liked the city at that time because there was Japantown, I guess they called it in those days, so we had a lot of fun going to different places.

TI: And so growing up, in the wintertime, did you attend school in Seattle?

BH: During the wartime?

TI: No, before the war, so when you were growing up. So when you were, like, in elementary school...

BH: Oh, I went to Bellevue grade school and graduated from Bellevue. And right after that is when the accident happened.

TI: But before then, in the wintertime when you were in Seattle, were you attending school? Did you go to school?

BH: No, 'cause I wasn't old enough, I guess.

TI: Oh, so this was even before.

BH: Before, uh-huh.

TI: Okay, so before you were going to school, you would spend some time in Seattle, then in Bellevue. But when school started, then pretty much you lived in Bellevue.

BH: Yes. I went to first grade in Bellevue.

TI: And during this time, was your... you mentioned you had an older sister in Japan. Did she stay in Japan?

BH: She stayed over there with the grandmothers. She came over when she was sixteen, I believe.

TI: But prior to that, you were the, you were the oldest?

BH: Oldest. I was oldest, yeah.

TI: So when you started first grade, was that pretty much the time when you guys stayed then?

BH: Stayed in Bellevue and I remember I went to grade school and I was scared to go by myself. I remember there was an older girl who took me to school.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.