<Begin Segment 13>

MA: So Shinmachi was pretty much gone after the tsunami.

JH: Oh, it was gone. Now, they do not build anything on the waterfront. The old Hilo is still there, but across the street, it's a highway. And then the main street in Hilo is called Kamehameha Avenue. So the homes that were facing the ocean, I mean, the businesses, are still there, but it's more like a tourist town now, more than anything. Everybody goes to Prince Kuhio to shop there instead now.

MA: So Shinmachi, though, was really the Japanese community?

JH: Yeah, it was a Japanese town concentrated with people that did not have enough money to buy their own homes. I think they were rentals. My father was lucky, my parents were lucky that we got that home. My old home is still there.

MA: In Shinmachi, were there also shops and little restaurants?

JH: Yeah, mainly shops. No, I don't think there were any restaurants. But it was like, the shops, like I said, were facing the ocean. And then behind them was the Wailoa River, and Shinmachi was like on a peninsula. Because if you go down Kamehameha Avenue now, there was a, there is a bridge. They built a new one over the old one, but we used to go over that bridge, and that's where the Wailoa River would drain out.

MA: And so your father's shop, right, was gone.

JH: Was gone. I have no idea where it was, except that it was in Hilo town.

MA: And what did your family do after that? You said you had to stay in, with the rest of the tsunami survivors?

JH: Yeah, we had to stay... so we managed to move from my auntie's house into Dokuritsu Gakkou. And there was this rich man who owned Moses Company, his name was Mr. Moses. He had a music section, he had a stationery section, and he had an appliance department. So he gave my father a job there. My father became the manager of the appliance department. He never, ever forgot Mr. Moses. Because when he went back to, I call it "Hellco" -- [laughs] -- he asked his old boss for his job back, and the boss told him, "I'm not hiring no Jap spy." That's why he had to look for something else to do.

MA: And this was the job he had before the war?

JH: Yeah. Wouldn't take him back. But Mr. Moses came to the rescue.

MA: And where did your family move to after that?

JH: Then... where did we go from there? Dokuritsu Gakkou?

MA: Because you had kind of been living with relatives and then...

JH: Then we went to that Dokuritsu Gakkou with the tsunami victims, then I think we moved to the naval air station. There were still barracks there next to the airport, and they were two-story. So some apartments were small, some were larger. So we got one on the second floor, and our neighbors were owners of Hilo Quality Cleaners, I think. So years later, I met their son. There was a couple and the sister that lived there, no children yet. So I have a lot of stories to tell him if I ever get to know him better. [Laughs]

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.