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BT: I wanted to just go back a little bit and talk about the Japanese Association and your father's role with that. I think you've described him as the mayor, or he was described as the mayor of Japantown. And was the Japanese Association considered, like a community center?

MB: Yes, I suppose.

BT: And what sort of organizations were there?

MB: Well, both the Buddhist and the Methodist people all went to functions that the Japanese Association conducted. Like the movies or they used the hall for various (celebrations), like Christmas the Methodist church would put on something and the Buddhist church would put on something else. And it's, there was really a line drawn between the two religious groups, I think, and one had leaders and the other also had their own leaders, and it was pretty, it must've been political.

BT: Did they have kenjinkai offices at the association?

MB: What kind of...

BT: The kenjinkai.

MB: Pension?

BT: No, kenjinkai, for the different ken.

MB: Oh, yeah, I think they did, and some were Methodist, some were Buddhist. [Laughs] And they used to say people from Hiroshima are very tight. These are the rumors that come out of it, maybe one tended to be... but they would say the background, Japanese background in Japan was a main reason.

TI: Yeah, I'm always curious, people talk about the different kens, they have different characteristics. So Hiroshima, sounded like they tend to be tighter with their money or careful with their money, were there other ones that you could remember, like Kagoshima, was that different? If someone said, what are Kagoshima people like or Fukuoka people, I'm curious what some of these characteristics are.

MB: I don't know, they might've talked about it, but they were pretty much not ostracized or not accepted by either group. They just existed and as friends. They're both, Hiroshima and Tokyo -- course, there weren't that many people from Tokyo then. The first group that came, I think, was Hiroshima, then the next group was the people from the south.

BT: Aichi was one of the big ones.

MB: Fukuoka, there weren't too many Fukuokas there.

TI: Okay.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.