<Begin Segment 12>

TI: Let's go back now, so you're a paperboy, Nichi Bei Times.

FH: That was for survival.

TI: Yeah. This is during the Depression. Right? This is, like, early '30s.

FH: '30, '31, '32, we were right in the heart of one of the depressions. '23, 1923, '22, '23, Hoover time, was the big depression. Big one.

TI: But wasn't the '29, that was called the Great Depression.

FH: Then '29 was this crash, Wall Street crash.

TI: Right, that caused...

FH: Then the aftermath of that, '30, '31, '32, '33 was still bad, and President Roosevelt had to come in to start War Relocation, no, War Recovery Act, WRA. And then that also provided jobs for students, and I remember I worked twenty-five cents an hour for that program for the college later.

TI: But I'm curious, so you spent a lot of time on the streets delivering papers and selling different things.

FH: Yeah, I did.

TI: I'm just curious what the, the Japanese community, how it was impacted by these hard economic times. What did you see?

FH: Well, I don't know too much about, you know, at that time. I remember there was a YMCA, the same Japanese YMCA that started in 1886. At this point, when I moved there, I joined the YMCA, it was a big house on Sutter Street, 1309 Sutter Street, right off of Franklin, between Franklin and Golf Street. And then I lived, to the Sutter Street, three blocks away I lived. So I used to go to the Y all the time. And the reason I mention the Y was that at that time, YMCA was very, very, they had students and they had a house. Not a building for the Y, no gymnasium. We'd play basketball in attic, which the ceiling was only ten feet high. But we had championship teams. The kids, Japanese kids were fast, and they were well-coordinated. So we used to beat all the white teams in the YMCA. But that's, the Japanese YMCA was important. Same YMCA that I worked in 1941, I finished Berkeley and got my degree, and I tried to go to graduate school. And I got in because I graduated with honors, which means that I had all A's and B's. I had a couple, maybe one C, the rest are all mostly A's. So I was a good student in college. Not grammar school or junior high school, but college I worked hard.

TI: So it sounds like, when you're in San Francisco, you would attend school, but to help the family, you would do these part-time jobs.

FH: Well, not only me, but all my brothers, they all worked.

TI: So what were some things that your brothers did? What were some of the jobs they did?

FH: Well, they did the same thing. They follow what I did.

TI: So delivering papers...

FH: Deliver paper mostly. And then as soon as I graduated in 1933, my youngest brother had just started high school. So three years, four years, I worked at a Japanese import company called the Nippon Goldfish and Tropical Fish import company owned by Japanese, Mr. Murata. It was just a block and a half away from our house on Bush Street. So I got a job there, my brother Tom followed me, my brother John followed after they finished school. So Muratas family were our employer for a while. Then after four years, my youngest brother graduated high school. So now, I said I can go back, continue my education.

TI: Oh, okay.

FH: So I went back in '37, high school, '33.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.