Densho Digital Archive - Takashi Hori - Yoshito Mizuta - Elmer Tazuma Interview (denshovh-htakashi

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DG: Elmer?

ET: When we started running a hotel was back in 1948. We were... after we came back from the camp, my dad thought that he could run a restaurant because that was his main work in this country. And he was probably around sixty, but he thought he could manage it. So for two years, but we ran the New World's Cafe on First Avenue and Columbia. Well, it was a little bit too much work for him. I guess his heart started to... well, he found out he couldn't take it so we gave up the restaurant.

DG: But he lived until he was 104.

ET: ...104. But then we decided maybe a hotel would be a little easier. We had to do something 'cause you got to live and eat. And I came from the farm with 900 dollar after working for Mr. Nisaburo >Goto so I had the 900 dollar, and my dad had a few thousand dollars saved after the sale of the Ten Cent store. So since it doesn't cost very much to get into a -- actually you're not buying a building, just leasing. So in 1948 after we sold the -- no, no. Yeah, '48. We must have gone into the restaurant business in 1946, and we got out in '48 so we bought the Benton Hotel in 1948. And we ran -- well, my dad and I, we ran that together 'til 1949 so that would just be a year. Or was it... well, 1949 because I got married and in 1950 I found -- I mean, my father-in-law and mother-in-law decided they are too old and they were going to give up Eclipse Hotel, which is on 7th and Weller. So I thought that was a golden opportunity. They wanted $15,000. Since I didn't have it, they said they will take 2,000 down and no interest. We didn't have to pay interest on the balance. For every month, we put in, paid her $300 and somehow we got by, although the rent was $12 a month for most of the room, but there was 80 rooms. And most of the people there were Scandinavians, Rumanians, well, mostly like Swedes and so on. And there was a few Japanese and maybe a few Chinese. Let's see what else was the question?

DG: Well, you didn't say your name.

ET: Oh yeah. [Laughs] My name is Elmer Tazuma and I was born in 1916, but that was in Japan. And when I was almost two, my mother and I came to the United States in 1918 to join my father. At that time he had started in a restaurant called the Alaska Grill and that was between 6th and 5th Avenue on Jackson Street.

DG: So your father, though, had been here a number of years.

ET: Yeah, he was here -- I think he landed in Nanaimo, Victoria Island back in 1908. 'Course, I could be wrong. That's the way I remember. And then he went to Montana to work on the railroad, but he -- after working a few months, he decided he's not going to get any place so he went into hotel as a dishwasher, a big hotel in Montana, and learned how to, beside washing dishes, learned how to cook. And in time -- I don't know for sure, but I thought he made partnership with someone he knew and they opened up a cafe, something like that. So he did all right.