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TI: Well, in that same one -- I'm jumping around a little bit -- but a few years ago, there was a controversy about the sale of the YMCA, the Buchanan YMCA, the YMCA was trying to sell it, I believe, or the YWCA was trying to --

FH: No, it's the YWCA building, and the YWCA... see, once a building is built, who owns it? It's really the community owns it. And the YMCA or YWCA are the guardians, but legally, legally it's, the YWCA owns it. And so they wanted to sell the building, 'cause the YWCA went down, down, down in San Francisco. They had to get rid of the headquarters, and they used the, this Japanese YWCA as their headquarters for a while. Then they decided to sell it. Bad leadership, but legally they had the right to do it. So they went to court and the community lost, so they had to buy it. So they had to pay to buy it, just like anybody else would buy it, but they had a right to buy it. You would think that the community raised the money, so they should go back to the community, but that's not the way it happened. So that's what happened then. The building is being paid for by this group called the Small Children's Group or something, and they have a childcare center there. Yes. There's a lady that's a mother of the lawyer, and she kind of spearheaded to get that building into the, stay in the community.

TI: So I may have been confused. So this, it was a YWCA, was that a different, a different building than where you worked at?

FH: No. We had a YM or WCA. It's the same YWCA that was partners with us. However, ten years later, I left to go to another community. Roy Sorenson said, "Fred, I want you to go over there, they're having trouble, and want you to kind of shore it up," so I said, "Okay." "But you have to find a replacement because it can't be a black person. 'Cause if it's just a black person, that person will, I mean, there'll be no Japanese coming. You're the only reason you got a few Japanese coming." So I got Yori Wada, who was an icon in history of San Francisco, from Hanford, Yori, and he took over after he turned me down twice. And so I said, "Yori, think about your children. And if it weren't for the Y, you have a much better chance of surviving." So he came over, and he'd done some wonderful things there. He was also into the YMCA Hall of Fame, national Hall of Fame, and he's done some, left a scholarship that still works to get children to go to school and those kind of things. He knew the governor very personally, he knew the mayor, he was a strong political influence with the Young Democrats, Yori Wada.

TI: So he kept it going.

FH: Yeah. And then, and then the YWCA decided that they're gonna raze every building except that YMCA in that whole section, Section A, Project A. And the only building standing was the YMCA building, the Japanese YMCA building. All the rest were completely brand-new. The ILWU, Harry Bridges group, built all that housing there. And there's only a handful of Japanese that bought and lived there. All the rest are mixed, mostly, I think, Afro Americans. Not one people that used to live in that area were able to come back without subsidy. Because once you build new buildings, it's gonna cost more money. So a lot of people that lived there were people from outside, not that were displaced by the new project.

TI: So it was very disruptive to that existing...

FH: Exactly. And so I supported the first project at the gymnasium at the Y. We had two or three hundred people show up, and I got up there and said we should support this project because it lowers crime, it improves health and get rid of rats and so forth, and make a new community here. When not one family were able to come back, I opposed the redevelopment for the next project. And one time -- this is strange -- I said, "I've heard of people putting their body in front of the bulldozers when they can't move. Well, the least I could do is I could at least get there and do that." [Laughs] So I went over there and I said, "You've got to run me over if you want to continue this project." Yori Wada showed up and he says, "Fred, you're stupid. You can't stop progress." Well, I feel guilty that I told the people to support the project, and you've got to have subsidy or else these people can't make it.

TI: And so that second development, did they, did they change it? Did they do things differently?

FH: Well, yeah. They tried to at least find some way that people could come back. And one of the reasons they didn't think about that when they started, but the second time they learned that, hey, you got to take care of the people, too. So they have to find funding to do what you call subsidy of rents and so forth, yeah. Now, at this point, I got fired from the YMCA, 1967. 1967, I got fired.

<End Segment 32> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.