<Begin Segment 10>

TI: Now, besides gambling, did they also do things like prostitution?

BT: Oh, everything, you name it.

TI: Alcohol?

FS: White slavery was big. He brought in woman from Japan, they call 'em "nomiya woman." Drinking, you know... what do you call 'em? They had a name, they're not prostitute.

TI: You mean like geisha?

FS: Well, in that sense like that. Hostesses more or less. And they come in from Mexicali, Calexico, Tijuana. From Japan to Mexico. Mexico was easy to.... see, I knew the laws in those days. (...) The ladies would come into Mexico, they come to, say, Tijuana. And then they stay there, and they get arrangement, and they get sent over the border. The "wetbacks," too, now, have somebody pick 'em up. In those days, there was not that much traffic. Very few. All the Japanese people, all the women, they came across. Nobody got apprehended. The only thing wrong was when the war broke out, they had to register.

TI: Oh, so they had no papers.

FS: No paper. [Laughs] They got caught, yeah.

TI: But you mentioned the term "white slavery." I'm not sure, what did that refer to?

FS: Well, I don't know, I was too young. But the way I heard was, there was shenanigans going on, you know, with women and men. Well, what they call a brothel, yeah, yeah. They had it in Sacramento. Sacramento had a yakuza, a big one. They were rivalry, Sacramento yakuza kidnapped Yamatoda and held him for ransom. And yakuza, they couldn't get nobody else, so they drained the Japanese. [Laughs] They ransomed.

TI: And back in those days, were there, was there violence in terms of killings or things like that, shootings?

FS: No, it was controlled pretty good. Any knifings, stabbing, but we don't hear it. It was not publicized; it didn't go in the newspaper. And if a yakuza died, nobody cared. No stink. You didn't cause society any problems. Society didn't pay for the funeral, nothing. Yakuza took care of their own problems.

TI: Yeah, how about the yakuza in terms of other ethnic groups? Was there ever a sense that they protected...

FS: You mean the clashes?

TI: Yeah. Did they have to, felt like they protected their territory or the community from, say, Chinese or other....

FS: No, because discrimination was heavy in those days. So minority never had a chance to clash, (...) like I fight a Chinese guy, the Chinese guy fight me. But grownups, Chinese, they had a tong, you know. Tong, they call 'em tong, what else they had? Some other name. And the Japanese people knew it, and the tong knew the Japanese guys, but they never came across the territory.

TI: Then how about like the police, the white police?

FS: They were on the take.

TI: They had to deal with them.

FS: Yeah. When the yakuza was in Los Angeles, active, the mayor down was on the take. They were given money by the yakuza.

TI: And how did you, did you ever see that or see evidence of that?

FS: No, I heard about it. 'Cause I knew this man that, Kinowaki I keep talking about? See, when Yamatoda got deported, Kinowaki became the number one man, but he had no power. He didn't have the, what do you call it, the figure, he didn't have the clout. So the yakuza, in 1940 or '41, disbanded because the mayor, new mayor came in, no more yakuza. And then Yamatoda got deported to Japan with his hakujin wife and a hundred thousand dollars in cash. They told Yamatoda, "Either that or you go to jail. We'll give you a choice." Yamatoda took the hundred thousand, his wife, and went to Japan. Why not?

TI: So this was right before the war broke out.

FS: Right before the war, I think '40 or '41.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.