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YM: My name is Yoshito Mizuta. My folks, father, my folks got the Welcome Hotel on Jackson Street, 517 1/2 Jackson. I think we moved down there -- I don't know long he had that, but we, the kids, the whole family, moved there about, in the early '20s.

DG: So you were how old at that time?

YM: Well, I was born in 1914 so must have been about six, seven, eight, something like that. I remember going to the Main Street School. I must have been about first grade then, first or second. And from Main Street School we -- that closed up around 1922 or '3, I think, and we all marched up to Bailey Gatzert. Bailey Gatzert was a brand new school, opened up about '23, I think. I think I was in the second grade then.

DG: So you all lived in the hotel.

YM: Yeah, we lived in the hotel.

DG: So how many rooms did the hotel have?

YM: I think it was about seventy. There were so many inside rooms that didn't have any windows or heat.

[Interruption]

DG: Let's talk about the hotel now.

YM: Well, there were several rooms, inside rooms, that didn't have any heat or water or windows. And then the outside rooms all -- there were quite a few families, Japanese, all stayed in the one room. They all stayed in the one room. Some families were, they must have had four or five beds in the room.

DG: Your father came from Japan, right?

YM: Yeah.

DG: When?

YM: Must have been about early... about 1900, I think.

DG: And so he first worked where?

YM: I don't know. I heard he was like armory now. He was doing that kind of stuff, I heard.

DG: Like the railroad?

DG: Restaurant?

YM: No, watch maker, jeweler, something like that.

DG: And where did he come from?

YM: Hiroshima.

DG: Hiroshima. And then so how did he accumulate the money to buy the hotel?

YM: Oh, I don't know about that.

DG: Okay.

YM: There was quite a bit of difference between our ages 'cause he must have been in the forties when I was born.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.