Densho Digital Archive - Kaz T. Tanemura Interview

<Begin Segment 1>

TI: So today is Tuesday, November 17, 2009. We're in Seattle at the Densho studio. On camera is Dana Hoshide, and I'm the interviewer, Tom Ikeda. And so this morning we have Kaz Tanemura joining us. So, Kaz, I'm going to start at the very beginning. Can you tell me when and where you were born?

KT: Oh, I was born in Japan, April 27, 1928.

TI: And what was the full name given to you?

KT: It was Kazuo Tanemura.

TI: And when you say Japan, where, sort of exactly were you born in Japan?

KT: Haemimura, Shiga-ken... you know, I hardly ever go, so I decided I better bring my little red book. Haemimura, Shiga-ken, Japan.

TI: Okay. Haemimura, Shiga-ken. Okay, good. And let's, tell me your siblings, brothers and sisters kind of in birth order, so we have that established.

KT: Oh. My oldest sister is named Haruko, and then my brother, Tosh, Toshikazu, then my sister Chieko, and then another sister that was, died when she was only two years old, Shizue, then myself, and then I got a younger brother, Masao.

TI: And in terms of birth orders, your oldest sister, Haruko, how much older was she than you?

KT: She was five, so she must be... she was eight years, I think eight or nine years older than I am. I got the dates on there, yeah.

TI: Yeah, just about eight years, just getting a sense of range. Were you, so you were born in Japan. Were all your siblings born in Japan also?

KT: No, they were all born here. I'm the only one that was born there. Actually, on the category, there's the Issei, Nisei, Kibei, and I say it doesn't cover me because I was born in Japan but educated here in the United States. So I always say Issei-han. I don't know whether that's the accepted terminology or not. [Laughs]

TI: So explain to me why the siblings were born in the United States and you were born in Japan. Why were your parents in Japan?

KT: Oh. Actually, at that time, just before, my mom always used to tell me that I was conceived in the United States, born in Japan. And at that time, my grandparents were ill, and my dad was the oldest of the family, he was the chonan of the family. And they told him to come back to Japan, so we all, the whole family went back to Japan. He only lasted there maybe less than, about four or five months, he just couldn't take that life. And my grandparents became well, so they decided to... he actually came back to the U.S. by himself, and he told my mother that as soon as I was old enough to travel, "Come back and rejoin them." And at that time, my oldest sister, Haruko, was left there with my grandparents. So my oldest sister was really raised by my grandparents.

TI: Back then, were there ever considerations or thoughts whether it was better for their child to be born in Japan or the United States? Do you recall anyone ever talking about that? Given your family and where you were born in Japan and your siblings in the United States, did, was there any perceived benefit by having been born in one place versus the other?

KT: No. I think it was a lot of, troublesome for me because I was always a Issei. I had to get naturalized, and it was hardship on me. [Laughs] I have to say I was born in Japan, and then explain away all the circumstances.

TI: So from your perspective, it would have been easier if you were born in the United States.

KT: Right, yeah. And, in fact, actually, at the time after I was born, they were wondering how, whether I could come back to the United States or not because my parents weren't aware about this act that mother and child would not be separated. So they were, later I heard that they were even thinking that since my sister Shizue died in Japan, of chicken pox, at one time they were thinking, "Well, maybe we could use her passport," to get me into the States. But, you know, she's a girl and I'm a boy, and then I would have been two years older. [Laughs] So fortunately they didn't do that. And when we came in, back to the United States, my mother and I were at the immigration building for about a month until they sorted out all the paperwork. And on my Japanese passport -- I brought that here, too -- I guess this act really says, "A mother and child will not be separated," I guess. That's how it was explained to me, and on there it says I was born abroad, temporary absence of mother."

TI: Okay. So, in essence, after they got that all sorted out, there was no problems with returning.

KT: Right, yeah.

TI: Okay.

<Begin Segment 2>

TI: You mentioned a little bit about your father. Let's talk about your father. And first, in terms of his family, and what kind of work did his family do in Japan?

KT: We were farmers in Japan. And my dad was the oldest son, so he was the chonan of the family. And my grandfather was very strict in that definition, even though he had two other, my uncles, I guess, younger than my dad, he decided that my dad was the chonan, so all the property in Japan was deeded over to him. And I kind of, I remember that my oldest sister Haruko was left there in Japan, and when my grandparents died, I remember my dad saying, "Okay, I want you boys to know that everything in Japan belongs to Haruko, and the stuff in the United States will be divided among here." And we even, to make sure that we won't contest the ruling, if we ever went back to Japan, he had the legal paper made out and we all signed it saying everything in Japan is left to her. And later, people were telling me that since we had property there, that they were saying, "Hey, you guys could, you boys could go back there and claim it." And I said, "No, not in our case. My dad made sure everything was left to my sister." So my dad was very organized that way. He made sure that things he told us, it was gonna be that way.

TI: [Takes paper] Yeah, I'm going to take this so we... put this over here. So I'm curious, so your father was the oldest. And when I talk to other people, usually it's like the second or third son is the one who comes to the United States, and not the oldest one. Because, as you said, the land is going to go to them, so they usually stay. And because the second one doesn't have land, they leave. So what caused your father to come to the United States?

KT: He just didn't like to be a farmer. He was the rebel in the family. He actually came, I think he was nineteen years old when he came to Japan, I mean, came to the United States. And then he was a laborer, he worked in the railroads, he worked in the lumberyard. And all over the state of Washington there are a lot of places where we used to drive out there, and he would show us, said this was the campsite where he was and all these places. And then we could tell because my brother, oldest brother was born in Winlock. My sister was born in Onalaska right down in this area. So when we would be driving down, I would say, "Oh, that's where my sister was born," and I would point that out to Ron and my other son Steve and my daughter.

TI: And the reason he was moving around was the type of work he was doing?

KT: Work he was doing. The different camps that the railroad camps were, or lumber camps were.

TI: Did he ever talk about what kind of jobs he had at either a railroad camp or a lumber camp, the type of work he did?

KT: At the railroad, I think he was just working as a section worker, moving tracks and replacing tracks and stuff like that. And then the lumberyard, I guess he ended up having the job where he had to, in the pond, he would have to spot which tree it was, fir, cedar, or whatnot. And his job was, they would tell him which, what they wanted. They want a cedar log, then he would have to go and hook a cedar log in the pond and bring it up to there so it could be taken up the waterways into the sawmill.

TI: Oh, so he was kind of like a sorter.

KT: Sorter, right.

TI: And was he one of those guys that would stand on the logs with a big pole?

KT: He would do that, and stay on there and pick it. So he was quite... and actually, I think he got the job because he was really tall for a Japanese Issei. In fact, I think he was actually taller than all of us sons by a half an inch or so. [Laughs]

TI: And so when you say "taller," about how tall was he?

KT: He was about 5'8", 5'9". So he was tall by his standard, and there's an old wedding picture, and he's standing on the wall, and he's a head taller than the rest of his friends.

TI: Given that he had two younger brothers that stayed in Japan, do you know, recall or ever hear, was there resentment that your father went to the United States and he still had the land deeded to him?

KT: I never noticed that. I mean, you know, I really didn't know any about my uncles and aunts in Japan at all. And then later on, when we, Setsu and I went back to Japan to visit, we stopped by there and visited all these people, but they were all deceased, most of them were deceased already. And I don't know. I really, my dad never talked about that.

TI: Okay.

<Begin Segment 3>

TI: So let's go to your mother. So where in Japan, where was she from?

KT: In the same village, and the same prefecture. And actually, when I was down there, I met my uncle on her side, and that's where I take after my baldness. [Laughs]

TI: Oh, so you saw the family, the baldness on the...

KT: Right, it was on my mother's side of the family. Both Tosh and Mas never had to worry, they had plenty of hair. [Laughs]

TI: That's funny. So how did your mother and father meet? How did they come to get married?

KT: That part is kind of hazy. I think it was a picture, "picture bride." Because it was really funny, after my mother died, my father, when all of us were together, he told us that he was actually married three times. And when he made that announcement, us kids, we all looked at each other. "Are we all, are we stepbrothers?" He said, no, we're all children from his third, third wife, my mother. And then he explained that the first one, his first wife, the marriage was actually annulled because her brother died and they wanted my dad to assume the, their family name. And at that time, my grandfather put his foot down, he said, "No, he's the chonan of the family, he is not changing his name." So they had that marriage annulled. And the second wife died very shortly, before there was any children, because I'm not, I don't think he ever said he had children by these other two women.

TI: So that must have been a surprise when...

KT: It really was a surprise. I remember our faces, we all, "What? What?" [Laughs] Big shock, and we all started saying, "Are we the same?"

TI: That's interesting. Do you recall how they met, though? You mentioned maybe a "picture bride"? It was a little hazy, you mentioned.

KT: I think it probably was an arranged marriage, because my mother's family were all, lived in the same prefecture. And I think, in a sense, was she really a "picture bride"? I guess, yeah, you might say that.

TI: Do you know what kind of work her family did in Japan?

KT: They were farmers, too.

TI: And do you know about what year your mother came to the United States?

KT: I think, well, my mom... oh. Tosh is five years older than me, so she must have been here... wait. My sister Haruko was born over here, too.

TI: Eight years.

KT: She was here at least ten years before I was born.

TI: So like late teens, like, 1918, 1919, around there.

KT: Yeah.

TI: And just in terms of what your parents were like, let's start with your mother. How would you describe her in terms of personality? What kind of person was she?

KT: Well, my mom was really a typical Japanese wife, I guess, very, very obedient to the family. But she was a saver, my dad was a spender. I remember we used to have a hotel, and my mom always was managing the money, and she managed to squire away, set aside money that my dad never knew about. And one of the incident I remember is when they went back to Japan, because my mom died in Japan. When she was over and she got ill... how did it start? This is after I was born, they were here, and then they went back for a visit. And when she got off, shortly after... I don't know whether the accident occurred on board ship or not, but something happened to her and she was taken seriously ill. And I remember her trying to convey the message to my dad that she had money hidden in her skirts, to tell my dad that the money was there in case... she knew she was gonna, she might not survive, so she told him that. And then another incident I remember was when my sister was old enough and got out of school and got a job, my dad insisted as long as she was living with the family, she should pay some sort of a rent. And she, my sister would always be paying these rent monthly, and my mother kept all that money aside. And I remember just before they were gonna leave for Japan, she brought all this money out and gave it to my sister and told her, "This was the money that you paid as rent." And she says, "We do not charge rent for our own family," and gave all the money to her. My sister was really surprised because that was quite a big chunk of money that she had accumulated. And my dad probably didn't know about it. [Laughs]

TI: So it was kind of like a for savings that she did.

KT: Right, right.

TI: So what, how old were you when your mother went to Japan that next time and died? Do you remember how old you were?

KT: Let's see. I guess it must have been... my mom did not see my graduation from college, so had to be, I graduated in '51, so I think she died in, around the '50s, 1950s.

TI: Okay. So this was after the war when you were in college that this happened.

<Begin Segment 4>

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.

<Begin Segment 5>

TI: So you're living down on First and Washington. Which elementary school did you go to?

KT: I went to Bailey Gatzert. Bailey Gatzert, Washington junior... well, at that time I was at Washington, it was called Eighth Grade Center, seventh and eighth grade only, it wasn't a junior high school.

TI: So that's a pretty long walk from First...

KT: Yeah, we used to walk from First and Washington up to Jackson, about a mile away, it was Twelfth Avenue.

TI: And then did you attend Japanese language school also?

KT: Yes.

TI: And which Japanese language school did you attend?

KT: The one on Weller Street, Fourteenth and Weller.

TI: Okay, so another few blocks away from, you had to go up there. And so describe like a typical day for you starting from the morning when you're at the hotel and going to school, Japanese school, returning. What would your typical day be like?

KT: Well, I guess in the morning, we would walk up to Bailey Gatzert school, and have our classes there. We would get out...

TI: But even before then, would you have breakfast?

KT: Yeah, we had breakfast at home. I don't really remember what our breakfast was. One thing I remember is when my brothers and sister were going to school, they were only given a ten cents allowance to put in the school banking system. When my brother Mas and myself were going to school, we were given twenty-five cents to put into allowance. And I think I went from twenty-five cents to fifty cents that I was putting in weekly into the school savings bank.

TI: But starting off again in the morning, so like breakfast, who, would you make your own breakfast or would your mother make the breakfast? Do you remember that?

KT: I think my mother made breakfast most of the time, and my sister may have started to help after she was much older. Those two primarily for breakfast, and then we would go to Bailey Gatzert. And after we finished Bailey Gatzert, which was around three, three-thirty, something like that, we would go down to Japanese language school and stay there, and that was an hour class. And then when we got out of that Japanese language school, I guess it was about six o'clock or something, we'd walk back home.

TI: Wow, so that's a long day for you.

KT: Yeah, it was a long day.

TI: And during the day, for food, what would you do for food? Like at lunch...

KT: Oh, we would take lunch to school, yeah.

TI: And would you also pack like a snack between regular school and Japanese language school, do you recall?

KT: We may have, some days, but I really don't remember too much what we did for snacks. We had some money, so I guess we went to the school because I remember buying ingamoi or something like that, ginger, you know.

TI: And what kind of student were you? If people were to talk about you at Bailey Gatzert, how would they describe you as a student?

KT: At Bailey Gatzert I would have been described as a very quiet, shy guy. I really didn't react socially. I mean, I was socially, I was immature, I think. [Laughs] It wasn't until I got to high school that I blossomed out. I think even in my freshman and sophomore years, I was pretty shy. And I think it was junior year at Hunt High School that I started to get more socially conscious. And by the time I came back and I had, went to high school, senior year in high school at Broadway High School, I was acclimatized, I started to blossom out, I guess.

TI: In terms of your studies, how good a student were you?

KT: In the grade school, I was slow, I think. In fact, I know I was slow because we used to have a split class. It used to be called 5-A and 6-B, meaning the slow sixth grade students were put in the class with the very smart fifth grade student, and we were all put into the same class. And even though our studies was kind of partitioned off, the fact that I know the classmates I had at sixth grade, and I knew they were all slow. And so I figured they classified me as slow. But then by the time I got to high school... and my senior year in high school -- well, actually, in Hunt High School, I was doing pretty good academically. And then starting in my junior year, things started falling in. Math became, was a struggle for me, but after my junior year, something happened. All the things, the concepts started to sink into me. I understood what I was doing. So once I understood what I was doing, I was an A student, yeah.

TI: Good.

<Begin Segment 6>

TI: I'm trying to think, so First and Washington, you're, like, in the heart of the Pioneer Square area. What did you do for play? Was there places to play down there with other kids?

KT: Yeah. There was a lot of landlords with family that had hotels there. There were quite a few, and then I remember we just played out in the streets. And then when the Hooverville, the homeless camp that was on the hill, we used to walk down there and walk down around the Hooverville itself. And we'd pick up ideas on how they were building their huts and whatnot. So we would go, I think it was Main Street, there was a place where it had a lot of furniture shipped to them, and they would have all their crates and whatnot out in the side. And I remember my friends and I, we actually built ourselves a clubhouse out of the straw mats that they had everything in. And we actually built a pretty good clubhouse in this vacant lot, had our own clubhouse that we would go to and stick around. We didn't smoke or anything like that. [Laughs]

TI: But you got your ideas in terms of how to construct it from the construction...

KT: Walking through Hooverville, right, seeing all how their homes were constructed and whatnot. And a bunch of us would get together and say, "Hey, they did it this way," we had our own ideas. We had a nice clubhouse.

TI: Interesting. So how far away was Hooverville from First and Washington? How far did you have to go?

KT: First and Washington... it was not more than a mile away.

TI: And so describe for me what Hooverville was like when you, what did you recollect about Hooverville?

KT: Well, I remember the people that were living there were real nice to us. They would see us and we'll talk to them. Some of them would even give us candy or whatnot. To me, it was good. I mean, we reacted pretty good with them.

TI: And describe, who were the residents of Hooverville? Who do you recall?

KT: All Caucasians. I guess there wasn't, I don't recall too many blacks, but mostly white Caucasians. They were all Scandinavians, predominately, I think.

TI: Now, did your mother or father ever warn you or caution you about going down there or other places?

KT: I don't remember being told not to go there. But, you know, they were running the hotel, so we were occupied. So I really, I don't know. [Laughs]

TI: And any memories about Hooverville that, like a person or something that just, you could remember from Hooverville?

KT: Well, I guess the main thing is that taught me not to be scared, you know, of them. Because I know when I was going to college at University of Washington, and my freshman and sophomore years, I would have my classmates say, "You went down on First Avenue?" They said, "We're scared to go down there." So I said, "Okay, let's make a night out. You come on down, and I'll take you around," and we'd go from shop to shop and all the shop owners would say hello to me. And I was well-known, I mean, they knew who we were. And I would walk 'em around and they said, "Oh, this isn't so bad." But they were really thinking that, hey, if they got, they went down there, they would be clubbed to death, you know.

TI: So that was your neighborhood, you knew the people...

KT: Yeah, right.

<Begin Segment 7>

TI: So describe kind of that neighborhood. I mean, you mentioned people would say hi. What kind of shops were down there? You had the hotels, but what other shops?

KT: Well, right underneath our hotel, there was a drugstore and a bookstore there selling magazines and whatnot. There was restaurants down the block from us. Oh, like on our block, on First and Washington to First and Yesler, that was one block. There must have been Del Mar Hotel, State Hotel, one, two, three, four, five... five different hotels strung right around there.

TI: And about how many Japanese were down in that area? Were there very many other Japanese?

KT: There was a restaurant, a Japanese restaurant down below us, and the three hotels were Japanese run. And kitty corner from the street there was two more, three or four. There was quite a bit of Japanese hotel right between, on First Avenue from Yesler to Jackson Street.

TI: And so lots of kids your age down there?

KT: Yeah, uh-huh.

TI: Now, how would you compare growing up down there to sort of the, more the Nihonmachi area, like Sixth and Main around there? How did things change as you went up the hill?

KT: Well, I knew a lot of people that were living around Fifth and Main and whatnot. And after school, we would all get together and walk home together, and then I would, sometime I would stop off and play with them at their, in front of their hotel, and other times I'll come on home, depending upon what I had to do.

TI: But did your, did your neighborhood have any kind of reputation versus another place, like, was like First and Washington or First Avenue viewed as, by the other boys and girls, maybe a little more dangerous than like on Fifth or Sixth Avenue?

KT: I don't remember any real distinction like that. I mean, we were all friends, we all went to school together, and to me, it was a drop off place. We'd be walking up there and they would join us, and we all walked up to school. Coming home, we walked back together, they drop off, and we'd continue. [Laughs] It was just a normal thing to me.

<Begin Segment 8>

TI: I'm curious, growing up in that neighborhood, they have sort of "underground Seattle." Did you as a boy ever kind of explore down below?

KT: Yeah. In our hotel, we had a basement access to down there, and I would go down there. And the walls between hotel and property had holes in 'em, so we would crawl out from one, and you were actually in someone else's property. But I used to kid these people that went on the underground tours, I said, "Hey, we used to do that with our BB guns and flashlights, and we would go, we played down there. And I remember one time we saw this great big rat. Had our BB guns out and I think it was two BB guns, and we fired away at it. And our BB shot just bounced off those rats, you know. [Laughs] And then I remember telling that to some of the older boys, and one of the older boys said, "Hey, I got a pump gun." And he's gonna, "This will blast through it," so he'd bring his pump gun and we'd go down there and try to find the rats and shoot at the rats and whatnot. So we, this so-called underground tour, the places they were showing them, we used to do ourselves, just jump one to the other.

TI: And so you would, it would be like an adventure. Go down there, rat hunting...

KT: Rat hunting, or just go down there and go from one building to another. [Laughs]

TI: And how large a network was there? I mean, how far would you actually travel down below? Was it just a block or so, or was it even multiple blocks?

KT: More like First and Washington, and I think we were able to jump around there to First and Yesler, Occidental, about one, two, three, four... three blocks or so, we were able to go from one -- it wasn't a direct path, we had to go around, because we had to find holes in the walls that allow us to make access from one side to the other. And it was all... it was a lot of fun. [Laughs]

TI: And do you recall some of your, your playmates back then? Who were some of your friends that you would do some of these things with?

KT: I think my friends that I made in camp, none of them were really living down in that area, close by. So they weren't with me, and I guess there was about one... you know, all their names starting to become a blur, but there was about two, two or three families that would get together. And I was among the younger one of that group, and then the older boys. I know, did you want the names of them?

TI: No, that's okay. I'm just curious, you're really the first one who is describing playing down in those areas underneath the underground Seattle area. Any other stories or anything else that you can share in terms of explaining what it was like? I mean, you're right, today in Seattle they have the underground tours, and most of it's blocked off, and they kind of go certain places. But you had kind of like this open access as a kid. What else was down there? Did people live down there?

KT: No, there was nobody living in the underground deal, because they would have, they wouldn't have access to that place until... because we had access because from our hotel, we had access to our basement. And from there, we [inaudible] out to all these other places.

TI: Well, did you ever run into anyone else down there?

KT: No, no. Usually when we were running around, I don't ever remember bumping into someone else unless they were part of our own group, you know, that went in there.

TI: And how about were there, kind of, was it dangerous? I mean, were there, like, empty holes or things that you could have hurt yourself or anything like that?

KT: There was, as I recall, there wasn't any deep hole that we might accidently stumble into it, I mean, the floor, it wasn't paved, it was brick in there, but it was smooth. And we didn't have to worry about that. And we didn't have to, we never worried about something fall, crushing down upon us, I mean, it was pretty stable.

TI: Now, was it a place that you weren't supposed to be? Was it kind of like there was a...

KT: Well, we weren't supposed to be in any of the places other than our own footprint of the hotel. But we didn't care about that. [Laughs]

TI: That's a good story. Yeah, I didn't, you're actually the first... I've talked to other people who've talked a little bit about the underground, but not, as a kid, playing around down there. So this is, that's interesting. We talked a little bit earlier about going to Bailey Gatzert, and we talked about Japanese language school. And then you said after Bailey Gatzert you went to Washington junior high school?

KT: Yeah, well, Eighth Grade Center at that time.

TI: And so about what year was that when you went to Washington? You were... I'm trying to establish with the war started. I think you were in, at Washington when the war started?

KT: Yeah, right.

TI: So what grade were you when the war started?

KT: Oh, I was in the eighth grade, yeah.

<Begin Segment 9>

TI: So let's talk about December 7, 1941. Do you remember that day and what happened?

KT: Well, I guess I heard about the war on the radio, I think. And that Sunday, nobody said anything to me about the war, or I didn't notice any animosity or anything of that. It was on December 8th that I really remember, because I was a school patrol boy, and my jurisdiction was Fourteenth and, Fourteenth and Main Street was my corner to watch, kitty corner across Collins Playfield. And I was on the, I guess that would be the west side, southwest corner of that deal. And I had my patrol flag and my patrol belt on, and that was my intersection to put the flag out. And all of a sudden, a car comes, going, traveling south on Fourteenth, came right at me. And he was coming at me so fast that he made me jump back on the curb, because I was afraid of getting hit on the curb. And then the driver pops out of his, opens up his driver, steps on the running board, and he really blasted, cussed me out. And after I was called a "Jap" and whatnot, and all the thing, "Jesus, boy, people are mad at us," you know. That was my first realization that we were hated. And boy, did he cuss me out. And then all of a sudden, he asked me what the heck I was doing down there, and I says, "What am I doing there?" I got my flag, I even had that flag up because I thought he was gonna attack me, you know. Then all of a sudden, bam, he shuts up, jumps into his car and drives off. But that was the first time I was called a "Jap" and whatnot, and the first time I felt the hostility of the people. To me, out of the clear blue sky. I didn't do nothing to him, I'm just standing at the corner monitoring the flag there, and he jumps out and gives me the "H" and whatnot.

TI: And do you recall how you felt about that? So you're probably shocked...

KT: I was shocked. Took me a while to get over that incident, that's why I remember it so badly.

TI: And when you think about that now, I mean, do you recall some of the feelings that you had about that? Whether there was anger, fear, shame?

KT: Well, it made me realize that we were hated, you know. On the Sunday of Pearl Harbor Day, I was walking around the street, and nobody expressed anything to me. Everything was same as usual. Never thought I was in any danger, that was the only time that physically I felt, "Hey, this guy was out to get me."

TI: How about school? Did you notice anything different in school?

KT: I really didn't notice anything in school.

TI: Now, you were born in Japan.

KT: Yeah.

TI: Did you, did you think about that during this time, thinking, "Oh, I was born in Japan, Japan attacked," was there anything...

KT: Those thoughts never ran across my mind at that... as far as I was concerned, I was a Nisei at that time. I mean, I never distinguished myself as an Issei until all these forms started, I had to fill out. I said, "Gee, what do I have to fill out on this thing?" [Laughs]

TI: Well, at what point did you understand that you were born in Japan and not in Seattle? Was there a certain, because you wouldn't know as a baby, but at some point, you probably learned that you were born in Japan. Do you recall when that happened? Or was it a sense that you always knew that you were born in Japan, or not?

KT: I knew I was born in Japan, but I never, nobody ever made a point of telling me that, "You were born in Japan," or anything like that. I guess, well, when I was going to college, I would get a call saying, "The Japanese foreign-born are invited to a dinner at so-and-so places, would you like to go?" I said, no, I wasn't interested. I says, "I have a home here, I have a deal there." But, you know, I never really thought about it too much.

TI: Okay.

<Begin Segment 10>

TI: Going back to school, Washington, so as the weeks went on, did you notice any differences at school or any assemblies or any events that happened as the word got out that the Japanese would have to leave Seattle? Do you recall anything?

KT: Well, I recall those things that we would have to leave. I remember a Caucasian male came up to our hotel window, you know, where we do our business transaction, and wanted to speak to my dad. And he said that we were gonna have to leave the place in there, and he was willing to buy the business, I don't know, couple hundred dollars or something like that. And my dad got so mad that he actually grabbed that guy and shoved him down the stairway, you know. And that's when I said, "Wow, I didn't think he had..." I said, "Wow, my dad's pretty strong." [Laughs] And he made a remark, "I came to the U.S. with nothing, and if I have to leave Seattle with nothing, that's perfectly fine with me." And at that time, he made up his mind that he was not going to sell the business. We kept it, so when we went to camp, we had a place to come back to. And at that time, we had a 1939, I think it was a Plymouth vehicle. And he said, "No, I'm gonna, we're gonna store there," so he stored it at the Kono garage on Fourteenth or something like that, and there was a whole bunch of cars that he actually had the wheels blocked off and stored there. And when we were in camp, Reverend Andy, Andrews, of the Baptist church, he would come to Seattle and then on the way back, from Seattle back to the camp, he would pick up cars that people had, others like my parents that had cars there, and bring it back to them. So on one of those trips, my dad made arrangement with him, for him to pick up our car, and brought it back to Minidoka. So we actually had a car in Minidoka. And at that time, I was too young to have a driver's license, and my brother was in the service, so I was using his driver's license in my pocket. [Laughs] I would carry it around with me. And when we left the camp, my dad, mom and myself, we, I drove the car, helped him drive the car back to Seattle. And my sister and other brother came back later by train.

TI: Okay. So, so he kept the car. But what about the business? How did, who took care of the business during the war?

KT: Oh. At that time, it was a Swedish laborer that was working in the shipyard down there. And they were from the North, I think it was North Dakota, and he made offer that he wanted to bring his family over there. And they were willing to run that hotel for us, his wife would be running the hotel and their families. So we made arrangement for them to take over the hotel. And they managed the business and took care of the hotel, made sure that the rent was paid. So during the, when we were in camp, we still had the hotel. That's why as soon as we were allowed to come back home, my dad said, "We're going back there." We had the place to go to. But they ran the hotel for about two or three years, and then in the last year, they made enough money that they were buying another hotel up the street. And I remember them writing letters to us telling my dad that, hey, they didn't want to leave us high and dry, so they will get another family from their hometown to come over there and live with them, and they were gonna take over the hotel. Unfortunately, the husband of that second family was a drinker. And he actually would go into the different people's room and steal their drinks and drink it. And the tenants caught onto that, and one of them changed, put some hairsprays and whatnot. And then the one whiskey bottle, and he got sick, real sick drinking that stuff. [Laughs] That was the story that was told to me later.

TI: Going back to that first Swedish family that managed the property, do you know what the business arrangement was between your father and the Swedish family, how that was managed in terms of, in terms of rent? Would some of that money go, be sent to your father in camp, or would they keep it? Do you know how that worked?

KT: I really, I remember Weston Wheeler were a realtor there, and they were the middleman. And they collected the money and made sure that the rent for the building was paid. And I don't know what the division of the profit was, but... whether we made money on that or not. But there must have been some kind of a cash reimbursement.

TI: But your dad was confident that eventually the family would be able to come back to Seattle, so he kept everything.

KT: I guess so. I mean, well, like I said, he made up his mind that if he had to leave with nothing, that was fine with him. So he never got pushed into selling the business or selling the car or anything like that. He hung on to it.

TI: Good. Okay, so he finds someone to manage the business, he stores the car, describe your family and how it went from, I guess, Seattle to Puyallup. What was that like for you?

KT: I don't really remember how I got to Puyallup. It must have been by bus, I think.

TI: Do you, like, remember what you packed in your bags or anything like that?

KT: No. I do remember that we had some Japanese language books, our textbooks that was burnt. I guess certain color textbook was bad to have in the family, and those were supposed to be burnt, you weren't supposed to keep 'em. I think those were the black, black in color, and then another, other textbooks were brown in color, and they were all right to keep. Now, I may have had the two colors reversed, but I remember my, they were throwing away things into the fireplace, you know, I mean, potbelly, to get rid of them.

TI: Now, when you think about those two books, brown versus black, what was inside, say, the black one that you burned? What was it about that one that made that bad?

KT: I really don't... I guess some of the wordings inside the textbook was too pro-Japanese, I guess. And it might have been, all been rumored that those were the things that was bad, because it was a panic situation. If you hear one scuttlebutt, and they will say that, and then they will be throwing those away.

TI: So what were some other things that you guys heard? So one kind of book was bad, so you burned that. Do you recall any other kind of rumors or things like that from that time?

KT: No, I really don't. I remember my dad was not the, not the community leaders that were interned for further one, but I guess he was the second level tier, and it fell upon their group to keep the church okay and take care of 'em. And I remember him getting pushed into the role of having to manage the affairs when all these leaders were pulled out and sent to the internment camps. The next layer of people were called upon to fill in some of those duties and things like that. So I remember him being quite active in that for the Buddhist church.

TI: So that's what I was gonna ask. So your family went to the Buddhist church before the war? That's the church?

KT: Yeah.

TI: But you mentioned Reverend Andrews, the...

KT: Baptist church.

TI: ...Baptist church. So did your father have a relationship with Reverend Andrews or the Baptist church?

KT: No. He just heard that they were bringing cars and stuff from, scuttlebutt in the camp. So he made arrangement for them to bring our car, yeah.

TI: Okay, good.

<Begin Segment 11>

TI: Okay, so we're gonna start the second hour. So the first hour we got up, pretty much to the prewar time for you. So let's pick it back up, and where we left it was we had just talked about going to Puyallup. So why don't you describe what Puyallup was like when you got there. What can you remember about Puyallup Assembly Center?

KT: We were in Area A, and I guess that's one of the parking lot. We were kitty corner across from the big stadium lot, and that was Area D, and we were in Area A. I just remember going there, and we were given a cotton bag and told, "There's the haystack, go over there and fill up the cots, mattress." They were, make your deal, I remember doing that. And we had metal cots to put those things on top of. Aside from that, to me, it was a lot of fun. I mean, it was a new experience for me, and it didn't affect my schooling or anything like that, so I kind of enjoyed, I enjoyed the camp. Being inside with all my friends, you know, it was really an enjoyable time for me. We didn't suffer.

TI: So you were eighth grade, so you were, what, about fourteen years old, roughly?

KT: Yeah.

TI: About fourteen. Let me ask you about the family unit. So at this point, who was sort of, what was the family unit? I know your oldest sister was in Japan. But who else was there?

KT: Oh, my oldest brother, sister, myself, and my younger brother, and then my parents.

TI: Okay, so three boys, an older sister, and then your parents.

KT: Yeah.

TI: So there were six of you.

KT: I don't remember when Tosh went into the army, whether he came to Hunt... no, I guess he was in Hunt with us, and then he went into the service, yeah.

TI: Okay, with six of you, how large an apartment or room did you guys have?

KT: Well, when we, I just remember the facilities in Hunt, because we were given the Unit B. The Unit A was for a couple or less than three people. Unit B was five to six people, and Unit C and D were meant to be four people, and Unit E was a replica of Unit B. And then the other unit was a smaller, yeah.

TI: So Unit B and E were the larger units in a barrack.

KT: Yeah. A and the last one was the two small ones, then the two five to six people unit and then a four people unit in the center, yeah.

TI: But so going back to Puyallup, you can't remember kind of your room there?

KT: It was just one great big barrack, and did we have a wood wall between, partition? I think we had a wood partition between units, and that was it. And then the ceiling was open, so you could hear everybody from one end to the other. [Laughs]

TI: So we, you mentioned earlier, you were fourteen, and some aspects were, you said you had a lot of fun. Describe some of the activities. What are some fond or fun memories that you have of Puyallup?

KT: Most of my fun, I guess, would be in Hunt. There were, in Hunt, Idaho, there was seven of us kids that was, our age group were all within two years of each other.

TI: Okay, so we'll get there. Let me go back to Puyallup --

KT: I don't remember too much about Puyallup.

TI: Like the grandstands? Do you ever remember going up to the grandstands or the old amusement park area? Anything like that?

KT: In the Puyallup area, the only thing I remember is my brother, younger brother Mas got sick, and he had to go over to Area D for the medical facilities. So I remember being able to go from Area A to Area D just to go visit him. And aside from that, we weren't allowed to go from one camp site A to B to C or D. It's only your area to Area D which had the medical facility and that was the only back and forth I remember. And only because my brother was in the hospital over there.

TI: Okay.

<Begin Segment 12>

TI: So let's go to Hunt, or Minidoka. So what are your first, let's start with your very first impressions. What do you recall of Hunt when you first got to Hunt, Idaho?

KT: Just getting off the train and being bussed over to the camp site and seeing the barracks and going through the same process of filling... I don't think we had real mattresses at the beginning, but later, I think we were given real mattresses. I think the first mattress must have been filling it up again.

TI: So you mentioned you were in Unit B. Do you recall what block?

KT: Yeah, 36-8-B. It was Block 36, Barrack 8 and Unit B.

TI: Okay. And so you were just going to talk about some of the fun things that you did with, I think you said a group of seven of you or something. So were these seven or six others that you went around with, six or seven others, were they people that you knew from before, from Seattle? Were these people you met?

KT: Of our original seven, I think I knew... four of the seven I knew from being in school and whatnot, and then the other three were new friends. But we were all of the same age group, so we were a gang. There used to be a younger brother's group, they had about ten kids there, and our group that had about seven, and then my brother Tosh's group was another different group. It was all divided out as to age-wise.

TI: And so your group of seven, what were some of things that you guys did to spend the time?

KT: Well, of that seven, three of us are still here in Seattle, alive, so we just used to go swimming, camping, camping out there. And then we, when we were able to go out for the summer month, we were, I remember as a group of two or three, we would be working as laborers out there. I remember helping to build all those ditches around the camp, you know, the water canals and whatnot. I remember we were working with a group up, a mason that he was a really good mason. He knew how to build brick walls and whatnot. And I remember a time where we had a hole in the wall, and he would look at it and then we would go over to the rock pile, and he'll call us over and tell us, "Okay, that's the right rock, and carry it over." And so we would carry it over and then I would look at the rock. No way is that thing gonna fit into that slot, you know. And he would tell us to hold it and turn it around and keep turning until, "Okay, push it in." And it goes in. I said, "Wow, he could just go to a boulder pile and look at a rock, size it up mentally and go to the wall and get it in there." And I remember when we went back to visit the camp later on, I went to, made it a point to go to the old gatehouse, and I happened to speak to a person there, and I mentioned this mason's name, I can't remember it now. But he said, "Oh, he died last year," you know. And I remember him really good, chatting with them around the farmland. He showed me where the hospital area was, and all the different area. And we drove through the camp site and just saw the concrete foundation of the mess halls, that was the only thing that could see from different area was the concrete foundation for the mess hall and the community center and then the barracks. You couldn't see nothing like that.

TI: So this mason was a local from Idaho that you worked with.

KT: Yeah. And he stayed there and they made it into a farming community, and they had a real ongoing community there. And some of the old barracks were still there, they added a side and it was being used for warehouses and whatnot.

TI: But I want to be clear. This mason, was he white? He was Caucasian or was he Japanese?

KT: He was Caucasian.

TI: Okay, Caucasian. So you were on a work crew, kind of one of his assistants.

KT: Yeah, he was the foreman of the crew that we were assigned to.

TI: And you were talking about, you mentioned the guardhouse, so I've seen that. So you guys helped build that part of the...

KT: No. The walls were more the irrigation canal walls that was feeding the thing.

TI: Got it, okay.

<Begin Segment 13>

TI: You mentioned, in terms of some of the activities, you mentioned camping. I was curious, what kind of camping were you able to do?

KT: Did I say camping?

TI: Yeah, you mentioned camping. Maybe... you went swimming and camping.

KT: With swimming, yeah. We used to go swimming. I remember that swimming part because the time that we went down there, I was part of that group where this, I think his name was Yosh Tamura from our block drowned in the canal. And it's in the Minidoka Irrigator. I had a reprint of that article, and I looked at the date and I said, "Oh, September of '43, I think." So I went to your Densho archive, Minidoka Irrigator, and was able to bring up that whole Irrigator and printed it. Oh, now I can get a copy of that. [Laughs] Because the copy I have is getting kind of frail. [Laughs]

TI: Yeah, you can make a new copy. So, for instance, did you know Yosh, the one, the boy who drowned? Did you know him?

KT: He was in the older group, and it happened that we were gonna go swimming, and we happened to walk by him and he said, "Oh, yeah, okay. You guys are going swimming? Okay, I'll join you." And so he joined us, and then four or five of us decided that we were gonna go up the canal and swim, float down the canal and then come back into the cove. And we started to go off there, and the person that's mentioned in the article, Shobo Tanaka, he stayed behind because he wasn't a strong swimmer. And he stayed behind with Yosh, and then according to the article, which I didn't know, Yosh was following us, going up that way. But we didn't know it, we just jumped into the lake and swam down in there. When we came back, he was missing. And I remember the effort we went through to try to find him, you know. And one incident I remember quite clearly is the people there made a raft, and they were gonna string this raft with ropes on either side of the canal and have a group over there, and deal. And when they, after they built the raft, one of the older guy was a fairly good swimmer, so he said he would swim across with a tow rope and we'll help pull him. And he took off and started swimming, and then Tak Chikamura and myself, we said, "Hey, we could help pull that." So we swam with him and went across to the other side, and the three of us pulled, had the rope that he trailed with him, and pulled that over. And then they ferried a crew over on both sides of the canal there and with this raft in the center and people, three people, I think, was on the raft, and then a crew on either side. And we floated that raft down the canal, looking at different coves and trying to find him, but we didn't find him. And a couple days later, a fisherman spotted him and the body was recovered.

TI: So that must have been a little traumatic for you, then, because you were right then and there when it happened.

KT: Yeah. And, you know, it happened to a guy that went down to the pool with us. And I remember we were in the water most of that day trying to find the, looking at the spot or, "Oh, where could he have floated to?" And if there was a little cove, "Oh, he could get trapped there," so we would go over there and stomp on the ground and swim around and try to find him.

TI: But he ended up actually floating right past you, is that what happened? He was farther down the canal?

KT: We're following the current, and then saying, "Okay, where could he have gone?" and then trying to go to the spot where the current would be going and look around those areas. And that's what we were doing with a raft and a group that went down the river, yeah.

TI: And how many people were looking for him during this time?

KT: Oh, whoever was in the block when we went back and reported him gone, they came down to help look for him. And there must have been a, I think there was a group of six men on the other side of the river, and another group of six holding the raft and floating it down, three guys on the raft, and all of us kids that were swimmers, we were looking around the shore line.

TI: And so after this happened, did they start coming up with different rules in terms of swimming, or did anything change because of the drowning?

KT: No, that that I recall.

TI: Did they, did the adults tell you guys to be more careful?

KT: Yeah, we all said it's gotta be a buddy system, have someone with you all the time. So don't go swimming by yourself, you know, the main thing.

TI: So swimming was an activity, you mentioned some of the work, digging ditches. What were some of the other, you mentioned your group of seven, what are some other fun things that you did?

KT: Oh, during the summer, we would, we went to Idaho Falls as a group and helped the farmers harvest the crop. I remember one time, in them days, earning ten dollars was really quite a task. And we were, a guy Shobo and I were picking the spuds off, and the farmer would have the ranch plowed up, so much of it plowed up, and then he would leave while we were still picking up the spuds. We were up at nine dollars and fifty cents, and we ran out of spuds. And we wanted to top the people running the plow a little bit more so we could hit the ten dollar mark, you know. [Laughs] And they wouldn't move it, and so we didn't make our ten dollar goal.

TI: It sounded like it was pretty good fun. It was hard work, but you were with buddies.

KT: Yeah, right.

<Begin Segment 14>

TI: Earlier you mentioned how your dad stored a car in Seattle, eventually it was brought to camp, and how you used your brother's ID, his driver's license. Any stories about driving around during camp with the car?

KT: Well, we weren't allowed to drive the car inside the campground, but when we went to Twin Falls or something like that, we were able to drive the car there. I remember an incident when a friend of ours in the same block, and a good friend of my parents, he died, and then the cremation was going to be down in Salt Lake City. So we had to, they had to get down to Salt Lake City, so my father offered our car. And so my dad and myself and then the deceased family, we drove them down to Salt Lake City. And then on some of the other excursions around there, I remember one I did a Hollywood stop on a crosswalk, a stop sign where you just cruise up to there and slow down and then make a turn without really coming to a full stop. I did that, and pretty soon a siren is roaring in back of me. We stop, and at that time, my dad knew I didn't have a driver's license, and he was really mad at me for pulling a stunt like that and getting stopped. And he was chewing me out in Japanese, and when the state patrol officer, he came up and he hears all this Japanese and he said, "It's not good for you guys to be speaking a different language. Because for all I know, you may be cussing me up and down and I don't like that." And he was telling that to me, I said, "Don't worry, Officer. He's cussing the heck out of me for doing such a foolish thing and getting stopped." [Laughs] And he took pity on me because he says, "Okay, I'll just give you a warning ticket." He didn't even look at my license. If he really studied it, he would have said, "Hey, this ain't the right...

TI: But he figured you were getting enough of a reprimand from your father that he would need to...

KT: He let me go.

TI: Oh, interesting. So when you took these two down to Salt Lake City, did you do the driving? Did you drive down to Salt Lake City?

KT: I drove to Salt Lake City, yeah. My dad would drive some, and then when he didn't feel like driving, he would let me drive the car.

TI: And so this was before you were sixteen, or how old were you at this time?

KT: Well, I couldn't get a driver's license, so I must have been just... was it eighteen then or sixteen? I'm not too sure. I think it might have been eighteen, so I could have been...

TI: Sixteen or seventeen. Your older brother, Tosh, you mentioned, so he went into the military service? And so where did he serve, your brother Tosh?

KT: Oh, he was in the 442, (L) Company, I think it was.

TI: Okay. And then any other memories of Minidoka?

KT: Well, I mean, we sometimes will talk, when our group gets together, we'll talk about those days. And we all agreed that our age group was not affected by that internment period, and we really had a lot of fun, and that was it.

TI: Well, how about your parents? Did you see any changes in them? Or what did they do to spend the time?

KT: You know, I really don't recall too much of what they were doing. I knew they were around the camp and they were home, and that's about... well, my dad was a fireman. He worked as a fireman down there, and I don't know what, I don't think my mother was working there. My dad was working as a fireman.

TI: Okay.

<Begin Segment 15>

TI: So let's talk about, so where did you go after Minidoka? What was the next step?

KT: Well, the next step, when we were allowed to come back, I think that was early '45, I believe it was. Like I said before, my father and mother and myself, we loaded the things what we could into our car and drove back home. And my older sister and my younger brother followed, they came by train over there. And we came back to the hotel and we lived at the Del Mar hotel from that point on.

TI: And when you returned, did the neighborhood look different after being gone for a couple years?

KT: Not that much noticeably different, yeah, I think. I don't remember any real distinction.

TI: How about the state of the hotel? I mean, was it in pretty good shape?

KT: Oh, the inside of the hotel was okay. It was really... couldn't think what... and I think we had, shortly thereafter, it was the restaurant across the street from Washington, Washington Street that the gas was leaking. And a city gas main was leaking and filled up the whole underground basement with gas, and these restaurant owners, there was the Otani brothers that had the restaurant down there, they came down to the restaurant and they started up their fans and motor. And then a spark set off that, lit off that gas, and it blew up. And I, there was a transient standing in the corner of First and Washington, and he got thrown off the, by the blast, erupted, and threw his body right into our hotel. And it hit our hotel side and he fell down and got caught in our first, first floor fire escape landing. And I remember... and it did quite a bit of damage to our hotel, windows were all blown out and whatnot. And as we were cleaning up, I remember one of the tenants telling me there was a body out there on the fire escape landing. So I went up there and looked at the body, I said, "Holy Moses." So I ran downstairs to get hold of a policeman to report the body in there. And I remember seeing his jeans, and his jeans, right by the buttons was split. His trousers were just literally split apart. I said, "Holy Moses," you know. I remember seeing the body there, I didn't touch the body or anything, I just called the police and had him hauled away.

TI: Okay. That was pretty traumatic. When you returned, how did people, how did they greet you? You mentioned how you knew lots of the store owners and people before the war and they kind of knew you. When you returned, what kind of reaction would you get when they saw you?

KT: I don't remember any animosity or them not being glad to see us. And then the proprietorship changes as time, so I don't know whether the same people were running that magazine shop down below our hotel or not, but there was another shop, and it might have been a different owner.

TI: And then in terms of the business, was it thriving after your dad got back, and was it easy to keep the hotel filled up and busy?

KT: Yeah. Our business was, well, we had some bad days, but generally speaking, it kept us busy.

<Begin Segment 16>

TI: And then talk about your schooling. So you returned to Seattle, you're in high school now. So what high school did you go to?

KT: My senior year I spent at Broadway High School. And I finished my senior year, and then after I finished Broadway High School, I wasn't too sure what I was gonna, whether I was gonna go to college or not. But at that time, I was thinking, "Hey, it might be nice to be a mechanic." So I signed up at Edison vocational school for their auto repair course, and there were so many applicants on that that they told me that, no, we couldn't sign up there. But for one year we would have to sign up as a general shop course. And I said, "Hey, general shop, that's good because that'll give me a chance to use these power machinery," which is something I regretted in Hunt High School, we didn't have any vocational training because there was no equipment. And here I said, "Hey, I'll get to operate a lay and do all these layout works and whatnot. So I said, "Hey, being in a general shop will be fine with me." So I was working in the general shop and getting along real good. There, the general shop instructor, John Yeager, I think it was, I remember his name because he, you know, watched my work, and he knew I understood all the mathematics because to layout aluminum, you had to make allowance for the bending of aluminum as you bend the curve, and you have to figure that in as you draw the plan. And I was real good at making my layout, and I could make layout for a box and fold it up, and outside dimension will match, you know. Whereas if you didn't make allowance for those bends, the dimension never matched what you were supposed to do, because you didn't allow for the bending. And he recognized that I knew how to do those kind of things with minimal instruction. I could catch on just reading the thing. And he encouraged me to. He said, "No, you should really go to college. You got the mind to, for, you're good in math, you know these skills in here, you should really go to college." So when he said that, I said, "Oh, maybe I should go to college." So I went to college, and I'm glad he steered me in the right direction.

TI: Do you remember having a conversation with your father about whether or not you should go to college or...

KT: No, they didn't really encourage me to go to college, but they also made it well-known that if I did go to college, the only thing I would be expected to do was to earn enough during the summer to pay for my tuition. But free room and board, which was the major expense anyway. So I said, "Hey, that's good, I'll go to college." And every summer I worked during the summer, made enough money to earn for my college tuition. When I started, it was only thirty-five dollars a quarter. [Laughs] And I think when I finished it was fifty dollars a quarter.

<Begin Segment 17>

TI: Now, in the summer, what kind of work did you do to raise money?

KT: Well, the first summer I worked in the railroad gang with Harry Nambu, it was an acquaintance of my dad. And for the first year I was with the gang of laborers repairing the tracks around. And my job was I'll be part of the crew that was working on the actual physical labor of moving the tracks and whatnot, but when we started toward the end, he would ask me to count the number of ties, rails that were used, the number deal, and I'll make an inventory for him to turn in that this is what we accomplished doing that. So I used to do that, and it was real good. I remember Harry Nambu because he had an eye that could lay a track straight. And at that time, this was, I was, when I finished my surveying course in college, and a transit happened to be close by. So I set up this transit over the rail, set it up, and I started to spot his line down the mile length of line down. And every time I would put the transit down there to spike it, right dead center on the rail. I said, "Boy, he has a good eye." And later on, one of the foremen came in a railcar, and I was telling, he saw me working the transit and he said, "Oh, you know how to operate a transit?" "Yeah, I'm just checking out Harry's eye, and boy is he good." "Oh, yeah, he's one of the best." He could just look at a rail and, you know, he'd have a crew of four people on either side with the spikes on it. And then he'll say, "Ho, ho," or, "Hey," and we would move literally the whole track like this over the belts, and he could lay that line real straight. He had uncanny... I said, "Boy, he sure did." And he's just standing over the rail, looking down, sighting that.

TI: Hmm. Because, I mean, so normally people would use the machines or the apparatus...

KT: Machines, yeah.

TI: ...to make sure it was straight.

KT: Well, the new ones all, it was done in one, one big rail car. I see 'em by the Boeing field, and I happened to drive by there, I saw this machine that was doing this, so I stopped and was talking to all... "Boy, that's some rig you got there and that was laid and shifting." I says, "I used to do that."

TI: But by hand.

KT: By hand.

TI: Interesting.

<Begin Segment 18>

KT: Yeah, and then my second, between the sophomore and junior year, I worked in a garage, and I was the gas pump, and Blue Top Garage I think it was called on Seventh Avenue, and then I worked as a mechanic doing that thing. And then my junior year I worked for Lincoln, Boulon and Associate in their office as an engineering trainee, and then I would be working on these lines. And that was the time when I started interviewing for school, I realized, hey, I'm not gonna be able to go work for Boeing, because they told me frankly that, yeah, my qualification was good, "But it's going to be hard getting you a clearance," because I was a Japanese nationality. And there, I found out, "Oh, this is gonna be tough." I'm not gonna be able to get a good job with any defense industry because I would have to be naturalized first before that. So I knew, realized that was gonna be happening, and during the summer, my last year, these people at the Lincoln Boulon knew some industry on First Avenue that needed engineers to do these works that I was doing there. So he recommended me for that job, and I was working for them until I got drafted. And when I got my draft notice, I went down there, and I figured I got drafted, but I wouldn't be able to qualify because my eyesight was so bad. I remember an incident where we, in my training, they told me, "Take off your glasses, walk into the room, look at the eye chart, and read the biggest letters you could see. And if you can't see that, just walk forward until you can see a letter, stop." So I just walk into the room, I took off my glasses, and then proceeded to walk almost two thirds of the way down. I would stop and I say, "E." And the attendant there looks at me, "God, this guy, we got a wise guy here." [Laughs] And he's starting to say, "Hey, wait a minute, Soldier. You're not supposed to be doing that. You can't tell me you can't see the E until you're up there." And just then the doctor happened to be walking by, heard this scuttlebutt, so he drops in, "What's wrong here, Soldier?" "Oh, we got a wise guy here. He says he can't see the E." So I just grabbed my glasses and I handed it to him and he looks at it. "He's telling you the truth," you know. So I figured, hey, I was, I flunked. And lo and behold, I go back and I get a notice saying, "Hey, you're drafted."

TI: So how did that work? I mean, why didn't your eyesight disqualify you?

KT: At that time, I really didn't realize why I didn't get a deferment. They needed bodies, and then they also had a program called Scientific and Professional Personnel program. And they never told me that. It was only until after I went through the training that I realized that program was in existence, and I guess it was designed to make sure that the people with scientific and professional training were not going to go into the infantry, that they would be kept stateside because they didn't want to have all their talent pool killed in action. So, but they never told us that.

<Begin Segment 19>

TI: Because at this point, just backing up a little bit, you had graduated from the University of Washington with a mechanical engineering degree, and you had all this experience. And so you probably took tests also, and so they put you in this special area for scientific and professional.

KT: Well, at that time, they don't tell you that, and then I'm in the infantry training. And after eight weeks of infantry training, they say all those with full classification 4-C, bad eyesight or physical deferment are step 1, rank forward. And they will go down the platoon saying, "Okay, you're assigned to this, mechanical, bakery," they'll send them off to different area. They come to my name and they said, "Tanemura?" says, "step back, you're staying in the infantry." I said, "Oh. That's odd. I got a deferment, and why am I still in the infantry?" I finished my sixteen weeks of infantry basic training. And then they called me up, and when they called me up, "You're going to Army Chemical Center in Maryland." So I'm headed off to Army, and the rest of the people were infantry, so they were going to Korea. And here I'm by myself, I got my orders, and I'm going to Maryland. And when I reported into camp at the Army Chemical Center in Maryland, walk into this place and we start talking around and we realize, hey, we're all graduates. The whole room full of us were all graduate. And then they told us, "Okay, this is for you people with a degree in scientific, we're keeping you here, and you're gonna be assigned to different areas from this point." "Oh, is that right? Well, what a thing." So I'm doing that, and then all of a sudden, there was a call in Maryland for a engineer with business training. And all of a sudden I get called up and says, "Hey, we see you took a five credit course in engineering, business law," whereas the rest of them only took the required three credit engineering, three credit course. "Okay, you're the guy with the business law training," And I get shipped off to Maryland, and I'm a nice office in there and I work there, I'm civilian clothes status, wore my civilian clothes. And I was doing that, and I was working there and all of a sudden they say, "We can't get a secret clearance for you. So you're not qualified to be here, we can't use you because we can't get you cleared." So they sent me back to the camp.

TI: And the reason was because of your Japanese citizenship at this time, because you were not a U.S. citizen.

KT: And to get the clearance, they were talking to people, my friends here on the coast, but they can't talk to all my relatives in Japan to get me the full clearance. So they said, "No, we're not gonna clear him." So I get sent back, then they tell me that, "Okay, since you're, we can't get you cleared, you're dropped from this program, and you're gonna be shipped overseas." So I said, "Okay." I said, "Well, okay." And at that time, I was thinking, "Hey, I might as well go to Japan and see if I could visit with my relatives in Japan," so I volunteered for Far East duty. And typical army fashion, they sent me to Germany. [Laughs] Opposite of what you requested. I go into the Germany replacement center, and they looked and me and they said, "God, what are they sending another clerk typist for? We don't, we got clerk typists galore here." And then they looked on my record, "Hey, you're a engineer. You could do drafting, can't you?" I said, "Yeah, I know how to do drafting." "Okay, you're now changed to draftsman," and they sent me to New Orleans, you know, from Bremerhaven down to New Orleans right outside of Paris, and I walk in there, report in there, and they say, "You're a draftsman. Hey, we could use a draftsman in the Paris office, Joint Construction Agency." So they shipped me off to Paris, France, and I'm stationed in there. And there, I walk into this office as a draftsman, and the colonel in charge of the office looks over my report and says, "You're an engineer." Says, "Yeah, I'm a B.S. in mechanical engineering." "We could use you as an engineer," so he pulled me out of the drafting group and assigned me as an engineer. So here I'm an engineer, rank of PFC, and I'm doing engineering work in there. And all of a sudden, you know, it was pretty good for me because that was a good job. And then they used to really praise me because there was only the colonel in charge of the office, and I was the only other military people in there. So any time an order comes in addressed to the colonel, it was addressed to me as the next military person in the chain of command. And then it goes to the civilian directors of the organization. And I used to kid, "Hey, you guys are all, when the colonel's not here, you're reporting to me," you know. [Laughs]

TI: So you were the second highest in rank.

KT: Yeah, military person in the place.

TI: As a PFC.

KT: Yeah, as PFC, and I'm doing engineering work there. That was really funny because I used to only put on my uniform once a month to go get my pay. And I'll go into this payoff, they got the enlisted people, officers. We go out there, and when I go up to the deal, god, they were paying me a lot because I used to get sixteen dollars per day per diem, that's four hundred eighty bucks there. My rank as a PFC was another hundred dollar, I had a clothing allowance of a hundred dollars, so I'd be getting, five, six, seven hundred bucks. And the second lieutenant on the other line, he only was collecting two hundred bucks or so. And he looks and said, "You must have had a lot of back pay coming to you, huh, Soldier?" I'd say, "No, sir. Sir, one month's pay, Sir," and walk out of there. [Laughs]

TI: So I don't get that. Why would a enlisted man get paid more than an officer?

KT: Because I was getting the per diem, sixteen dollars per day per diem.

TI: Now, why weren't the officers getting per diem?

KT: They were still in the military. I just go to the base only to collect my pay.

TI: Okay.

KT: So once a month, I had to go into the base to get my pay, and then they got these two, the pay line, you know.

TI: Then you would stay like in an apartment in Paris?

KT: Right.

TI: And so what was it like living in Paris?

KT: It was really fun. I lived in Paris for nine months there, and then I went to night school, I went to Alliance Francaise to learn French, you know. But I forgot most of that now. [Laughs] But I really enjoyed my stay in the military there. And since this colonel was there, he made sure that I would keep my engineering training. So that was really a good deal for me. And when I finished my tour in there, I was thinking, "Hey, they offered me a civil service job down there." They said, "Well, we really got to start you off as a GS-5, but with your experience, we could give you a GS-7. And within six months, you will be a GS-9." And I tell him, "Jesus, the job I'm doing right now is a GS-11. You want to hire me as a GS-9?" I said, "What kind of a thing are you..." and I was really thinking about that, because I said, hey, can't get a job, I still have to get naturalized first, and maybe I should stay there. And then what clinched me to come back was I heard that if you sign up for a civil service job there, when I finished my tour, I had to pay for my own transportation back to the States. I said, "God, you mean it's better to go back to the States as a military, and then sign up from the States?" I said, "Oh, okay, I'll keep that as the background," and I knew who to contact if I wanted that job and go back. Then I came back here and I said, well, do I really want to work over there? So then at that time, naturalization was open to us, so I, that was a good story.

<Begin Segment 20>

TI: Yeah, before we go there, I'm curious, while you were stationed in Europe or during your tour, did the 442 ever come up in terms of their service and their accomplishments, and was there ever an impact on you?

KT: Not when I was there in Europe. But on my way from the West Coast to the East Coast, I happened to drop in in Texas, going through there. And there I got the benefit, because I happened to be at a bar, and I was going to get some beer and sandwiches over there. And then a guy comes up there and said, "Well, were you in the 442?" And I said, "No. I was too young for the 442, but my brother was in the 442nd, in (L) Company." "Good enough for me, drinks are on me." And he'd buy me a beer, and then pretty soon, all the other veterans in there saying, "Buy him another round." They treated me real nice. So I was the benefactor of their services.

TI: Did any of them ever tell you why they bought you the beer other than the 442, did they talk about...

KT: They talked about 442, and then I guess one of them was in the "Lost Battalion" that got saved, and he said, "They really saved our gut out there." And then the other people said, "Oh, okay, next round's on me," and stuff like that.

TI: That's a good story.

<Begin Segment 21>

TI: So, now, after your tour, you talked about naturalization?

KT: Yeah, that was really interesting. I come back here, and I wanted to get my citizenship, so I went down there to apply for that deal because that was in October, and I knew I would have a job with Boeing as soon as I got my naturalization paper there. And then when I walk into there, they tell me, "You have to take the course there, six months' course before you could apply for naturalization paper." And I balked at that. "Look," I says, "I was educated in the U.S., K through 12, University of Washington graduate, I do not need to go to any history class to learn that." And we hemmed and hawed, arguing about that, and finally, the guy said, "Well, in view of your military service, we'll let you take the test." And boy, did I cram for that test. "Two weeks," they said, "come back here for your test." And I really crammed for that federal history, and I really passed it. And the guy says, "Well, you did pretty good on your test." I said, "I was a 3.4 GPA in college, engineering school," I said, "I know how to take tests." And then there was the oral examination portion, and he said, "Well, we still got to go through this oral examination." And he says, "Can you name the thirteen colonies?" I said, "God, what a question to ask me," I said. I just went right through it because I had a good memory at that time. Not anymore, but that time. And finally when he finished, I said, "God, you're giving me this oral exam and you got the nerve to ask me that question?" I said, "If you go out on the street and pull the guy, how many guys could really answer the legislative, the executive and judicial branch of the government, all that thing?" I said, "Come on." He said, "Well, I wanted to test you to see. You did so good in your written examination, I was testing you." And I was kind of mad for them to... and when I finally got to a point where I would "swear to bear arms for your country," I said, "I bore arms for my country." [Laughs] And later on, I happened to be talking to another friend of mine, and I said, and the hassle I went through and how I got... he says, "You know, my sister is in the same boat as you. She was teaching those courses. And when she applied for her naturalization paper, after telling them she taught that course, they didn't agree. They made her wait six more months to take the course as a student." Yeah, the bureaucracy. You got to fit each form, and since she didn't have a military service to fall back on, they made her wait six months to get it. I remember arguing, "Hey, I got a job coming for me. I can't get that job until... hey, I'm broke. I don't got no money stashed away." [Laughs]

TI: That's a good story. But you mentioned earlier that, you said, as soon as you got naturalized, you knew that job at Boeing was waiting for you. How did you know that? Was Boeing hiring at that point?

KT: Yeah, they were hiring. Back in '54, hey, any engineer could have walked right up to the employment office and get hired then. They were clamoring for engineers. The 707 program was starting to build up, and they needed engineers, you know. So it was a given. As soon as I got my naturalization paper, I was on the payroll.

TI: So you decided to do Boeing versus civil service, because civil service was another option.

KT: Another backup that I could go, but then I had to go through the process of going through that. And besides, at Boeing, I was getting a good pay there.

<Begin Segment 22>

TI: So you, my notes I have that you worked there for thirty-five years at Boeing. I mean, any interesting events or stories about working at Boeing that you want to share?

KT: Well, I mean, it was a fun job. I had a real nice position. I wasn't in management, but I was this senior principal engineer. So under today's system, I would have been a technical fellow, that rank. Where instead of going into management, you could branch off into the technical fields and go up the ranks in the technical field. So I was at the top of my, for my skill code rating, I was the top Boeing person in that skill code rating. So I was number one, so anytime some problem comes up in that field, I would get calls from these different people wanting to get an expert's opinion. And they would usually call me, so I got in on a lot of these deals, and I was considered the top engineer. And my management told me, "No, we need you as a technical person because you know how to train engineers and they like you, and you have a knack for training." And even though I wasn't in management, I had my own office, I had all the perks of a manager, so I couldn't complain. My pay was good. [Laughs]

TI: So what was your area of expertise?

KT: Oh, environmental control system. I was the, actually, on the 767 airplane, I was the responsible engineer for the design and certification of the environmental control system. So that's a big field, you know, and in that field, I was also a designated engineering representative for the government. So I would pass on these thing, and every airplane that rolled down the deal for the environmental control system, I had to sign off on it. Because as a federal government employee, I was putting my name on that, the system was designed according to the FAAR regulation. So I had a very responsible position with the company.

TI: When, you know, I've talked to some other Nisei engineers, and some of them mentioned that they felt that the Niseis were sometimes taken for granted a little bit, that they weren't given, that they would do quality work, but oftentimes felt they weren't promoted as quickly as, say, a white engineer or worker. How do you feel about that? Did you have a sense of...

KT: Well, actually, I was, comment, they told me quite frankly that, "You know, you have a knack for speaking up. If you see something going not the way, you immediately step forward and speak up and state your opinion on that." And he says, "That's something we admire in you because other people of your nationality don't do that. They just quietly won't say anything. They may say something later, but they won't speak up." And for that reason, they said, they put me in the position because I wasn't scared to, I never held back. I would just tell 'em my opinion and state it. And because I would do that in a lot of these different meetings, when we had these joint get-togethers, the chief project engineer would call me out right in front of the group, said, "Okay, Ted, what do you think of all this?" And they'll ask me to speak up and state my opinion. So they treated me okay.

TI: So you felt that Boeing did well by you, I mean, that things worked out well. Okay.

<Begin Segment 23>

TI: So I have to ask you how you met your wife.

KT: Oh. [Laughs] I differ from what my wife said on there. That my older brother didn't say he would send me. Giro, the mutual friend did call me on the phone and he says, "Hey, you got to do me a favor, and you owe me." A good fishing buddy of mine. He says, "You got to take my sister-in-law to this dance." So I said, "Okay, I'll come down."

TI: So you got a call, so your future wife was in Portland, you're in Seattle, and you get this call to, essentially, take this woman to a ball or to a dance. And so what were you thinking? That was okay with you, you thought that would be fun?

KT: Oh, I thought it would be fun. And then I brought my friend along with me for moral support. [Laughs] And when we got down there, we clicked. We met each other, and everything just clicked. So it was a lot of fun.

TI: So what was it about your wife that stood out for you? What attracted you to her initially?

KT: Well, I could speak to her. She doesn't hold back either. I mean, she'll speak her mind, and I spoke my mind, so we had a common trait on there. And lot of times we'll get into an argument, but, I mean, we both, we didn't hold back.

TI: So I interviewed your wife last week, and one of the things that was interesting to me was how during a critical time during her upbringing, she was actually raised by...

KT: A Swedish family.

TI: ...a Swedish family. And so I'm curious, when you met her, did she seem different than the other, like, Nisei women that you knew, or was there something different about her and how she was raised?

KT: I didn't really make that distinction, I just knew she was a lot of fun to be with. She was knowledgeable, I mean, she could speak up on all kinds of things, and that was the mutual attraction, really. [Laughs]

TI: So describe for me how you proposed to your, to your wife.

KT: How did I propose to her? I guess I did have her come up to Seattle, and she stayed with my sister. I think I just showed her the ring. [Laughs]

TI: [Laughs] Okay, I just had to ask that. After interviewing your wife and having such a good time, I just wanted to kind of get your side of the story of how the two of you got together.

<Begin Segment 24>

TI: So I, we're finishing with two hours now, and I'm just looking at my list of questions. So I've asked my questions. Is there anything else that you wanted to talk about? Something that, about your life or an experience, an event that you haven't covered that you'd like to talk about?

KT: Well, no. The only thing, I'll just scuttlebutt of the office in here... there was a 707 airplane, do you remember that one taking a skydive from 35,000 feet down to 5,000 feet? They almost lost the airplane, but they were able to recover the airplane? Well, the aerodynamic groups, I think, was keeping track of that airplane because it's just a deal. And they found that it's equivalent to, miles per gallon on that airplane was really good. So the aero department brought that airplane back to Seattle to inspect it. And when we really gave it an inspection, there was a particular twist in the wing that turned it. It got deformed in this sudden pull out. And they looked at that and the scuttlebutt was, "God, that must be what's making that airfoil work so good." And I remember them having a lot of structural engineers look at that airplane and see whether we could duplicate that in the factory, put that twist in there. And says, "God, no way could we come up with that machinery to put that kind of a twist into that thing." But the sheer forces involved as the airplane pulled out of the, twisted that wing in just enough to give it the perfect aerodynamic shape for cruise flight. Because that airplane had the best GPM. [Laughs]

TI: Oh, interesting. So the stress of going down and doing that...

KT: Going in there and pulling out.

TI: ...twisted the wing.

KT: Twisted the wing, put a champer in there. I'm not an aerodynamic side, but they said, hey, that's the only thing they could theorize, is put a twist into that wing which we can't duplicate at that time. I don't know whether now they could or not.

TI: And that increased the fuel efficiency, that it flew much better than the other planes.

KT: Yeah. So, I mean, in the position I was in, I would cross fields with all the different disciplines of there, then I used to hear all these different stories on the different planes.

TI: And just kind of like always trying to make them better and better, each plane.

KT: Right.

TI: And any thoughts about Boeing these days? I mean, you worked on the 767, and then after that was the triple 7, then the 787, the Dreamliner. Any thoughts about design of airplanes today versus when you were there?

KT: In my generation, we always say, "Hey, Boeing was supposed to have absorbed the Douglas, and in reality Douglass has taken over Boeing." Because most of the top people now are Douglas trained people rather than Boeing trained people. And I don't know. The Boeing engineering department, I don't know. They don't seem to be, stuff about these things... hey, they should have caught that early in the design. But now, they don't seem to really do their engineering job that they should be doing. And when I talk to some of these engineers in the different disciplines, they don't have the same drive that we had. I used to know about things other than my field. I would know about it. But now, these guys, I talk to them, they could tell me quite a bit in their own field, but when I stray from that subject, they're total blank. They don't care. [Laughs]

TI: So there's almost like a change of philosophy in how things are.

KT: Yeah, the whole philosophy is different.

TI: And you think, and that may have contributed to the delays on the 787.

KT: They're not watching their p's and q's.

TI: Interesting. Good. Anything else you want to...

KT: No.

TI: Well, so Kaz, thank you so much. This was...

KT: Okay, it's been a pleasure.

TI: ...a fun interview, and I've learned a lot. So thank you so much.