<Begin Segment 31>

MN: Now, after you got out of camp you also got a draft notice. Why didn't you go into the service? What happened?

AM: Well, let's see, I did get a draft notice. In fact, I went to take a physical and I passed it and was about to get inducted, but then I decided maybe if I could do, do some interpreting, because I was, I went to school in Japan, so I knew some Japanese, I thought maybe instead of going into, the war was not quite over yet, so my concern was, you know, I didn't want to go into the army doing regular infantry type of thing, so if I, lot of the Japanese were going into interpreting, so I tried, I tried to go into that. But then, after the war ended, there was a thing called, they called a draft holiday, so they weren't taking anybody, so I didn't pursue that anymore.

MN: And then so you helped your father reestablish his studio?

AM: Yes.

MN: Do you remember what year your father opened the studio?

AM: Must have been about 1947.

MN: And then where did he open his studio?

AM: The address was 364 East First Street. This was a location where this family named Kaminski who owned the property, they used to have a business in Little Tokyo prior to World War II. They used to sell cigarettes and things like that. It was like a discount house. But they quit the business and so that place was vacant, so my father decided, well, it's, Kaminski's old owner, so he will, he knew them sort of, I guess, from prior to World War II, so he negotiated there and he was able to rent it.

MN: Did you say 364 or was it 318 East First Street?

AM: Oh, 318, I'm sorry. Yeah, 364 was towards Central Avenue. That's where my father had the business when the war broke out.

MN: Now, when your father reopened the business, did he have African American clients?

AM: No. They were mostly Japanese people, but some of the Caucasian people started coming, because they knew my father and so he was getting some of those people, and also people from Hollywood started to come again.

MN: When you moved back, did you see a separate studio for African Americans in Little Tokyo, or Bronzeville, as they called it?

AM: I don't, I can't recall seeing any studio operated by the black people.

MN: And the, by this time your family had moved back into the, the Boyle Heights home?

AM: Like I told you before, for a while we were living in the garage until the students from White Memorial Hospital graduated or they went, went beyond, so we waited for those people to move out and then the family moved in, back into the house. And then still there were a lot of Japanese Americans who had a hard time finding a place to live, so my father used to have the friends come over and stay there. At one time in that three bedroom house there must've been about thirty people living in there. It was, we had to eat in shifts and thing like that. So they knew what a shortage of house there was, so my father and mother opened up the house for a lot of their friends to move in, so there were a few housewives, so they all pitched in and helped make the food and everything, so it was quite busy there for a while until they slowly started to be able to find a place of their own.

MN: Now, I know before the war your father, your parents left the house as is with all the furniture and everything. When you moved back into that house, what was the condition of the house?

AM: It was in very good condition. They took very good care of it and most everything was still there. So they were pretty lucky that way, where they didn't have to struggle like some other people did. They were very thankful for that.

[Interruption]

AM: When the Maeda family moved back from Manzanar they moved to Azusa, that's where my wife's aunt had a property and a business there, so they moved over there and they lived in their house for a while. And then my father-in-law got a job with orange people, which was in Glendora, little further away from Azusa, so the whole family moved over there. So when I, whenever I wanted to go see her I had to go way out to Glendora and the only way I could go was go on the Pacific Electric, the red car those days. I'd go to the very end and from there I had to walk about four, five miles to the place where she used to live, so every time I'd go see her I would have to do that. And one of the times I was walking along the highway and this one Caucasian lady stopped her car and says, "Gee, you have a long ways to go, I'm sure, so if you want a ride I could give you a ride," so I hopped in her car. And then she, as she was driving she said, "Do you know this girl named Sally Rand?" I said yeah. I used to see this name in the newspaper ad. She was one of the girls dancing in the Follies on Main Street. She says, "I'm her mother." Oh my gosh. [Laughs] I was so shocked when she told me that. But Sally Rand was very popular those days, well-known dancer that was on Main Street place called Follies, and so I told that to my wife when I got there and she was so shocked to hear me say that. And I knew about this dancer named Sally Rand because she was so well-known. She was known for being a nude dancer and things like that. [Laughs]

MN: You never went to see her, did you?

AM: No, I never did, but I was only, I was always aware of that name because, and then when she said, "I'm Sally Rand's mother," it just shocked me.

<End Segment 31> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.