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TI: So let's, let's talk about the type of work your parents did. So where did they settle and what kind of work did they do?

KT: Oh, when they came over here, we had a hotel on First and Washington called the Delmar Hotel. And we ran that hotel all the time. And later on, I found out that, actually, my aunt and her family were, had that hotel. My aunt's husband passed away, so she went back to Japan. And at that time, evidently my grandfather had some money in the business, too, because he decreed my father will take over the hotel. And that's, we were in the hotel business then. At that time, they didn't own the building, we just owned the furniture and the business itself. So we were paying, paying rent to the landlord for the building itself, but they owned everything inside the building.

TI: So let me make sure I understand this. So was this your father's sister that went back to Japan?

KT: Yeah.

TI: Okay, so it was on your father's side. So tell me a little bit about the Delmar Hotel. How large was it, like how many rooms?

KT: It was on the corner of First and Washington, and it's still there. It's now converted into an office space, and it's a real, it's been refurbished into a real nice office space. It was three floors, and I guess there must have been at least fifteen, twenty rooms on each floor. It was a full-time work. I used to help make the beds and clean the pots and stuff like that.

TI: And who were the usual tenants or customers of the hotel? Who would stay at the Delmar Hotel?

KT: They were mostly bachelors, men. And they were just day laborers, I guess, that type of deal. They were above the homeless because they could pay the rent, even though the rent was only like twenty-five cents a night or something like that.

TI: So generally would the tenants pay on a nightly basis or were they weekly or monthly? How would that work?

KT: Most of the business was daily basis, though we had a few customers that were, paid by the week or the month, I don't know which way it was. But I remember there were some tenants that, whenever we went someplace, they would be asked to kind of look over the property there.

TI: And you mentioned they were, like, day laborers. Were they Japanese, Filipino?

KT: Oh, no, they were all Caucasians.

TI: All Caucasians, okay. And how was that? How did, in terms of relations between Caucasian customers and Japanese, sort of, management, were there ever any problems between the...

KT: I never noticed any. In fact, on Thanksgiving and whatnot, there was two or... there were three of those that my parents would always invite one or two or all three to our family Thanksgiving dinner.

TI: And describe a Thanksgiving dinner. What kind of food would you have?

KT: It was turkey and all those things, yeah.

TI: So traditional sort of Thanksgiving.

KT: Traditional, yeah, Thanksgiving dinner.

TI: So you mentioned a little bit when you were growing up, you had to work at the hotel.

KT: Right.

TI: Making beds, stuff like that. What are some other things that you remember about the hotel? Like any memories or events or incidences that you can recall?

KT: Well, I remember our stairway banister, that it was a solid oak wood. And my dad decided that, hey, keeping it polished and whatnot was too much, too much time-consuming, so we painted the whole thing, all the stairway was painted. And later on, when I, as an office, I went back to that place to visit that place because I was on jury duty, and I had a lot of time between deals, so I went down to First and Washington, I went back in the building and I looked at the thing and saw the condition it was. And I talked to those people and they were telling me, the people that refurbished the hotel, they were saying, "Oh, yeah, we spent a lot of time taking all that paint. I wonder who painted it." [Laughs] I said, "My dad did, and I helped paint it."

TI: Because it was just beautiful oak wood.

KT: Right. And they had it all, the paint all stripped off, and it really looked nice. I said, "Wow."

TI: That's funny.

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