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SF: Who lived in the adjoining areas to Nihonmachi? In other words, was there a Chinese community, Jewish community? Was it just basically whites? Or were there areas that Japanese couldn't go or areas that they were sort of channeled into?
CK: In the immediate perimeter of the Nihonmachi, there were very few family homes. Very few. They were mostly, let's see, warehouses, or commercial type of buildings.
TS: Small hotels.
CK: Yeah, right.
YM: And some of them, had living quarters behind their stores. And so many of the, not many, but a few of the families that were on Main Street near our store were living behind the stores.
CK: And those that had hotels usually lived in that hotel.
YM: The whole family...
CK: Yeah, right.
YM: Lived there.
SF: And Seattle is kind of known for having lots of Nihonjin hotels, huh?
CK: Yes, right.
YM: Hotels and apartments.
TS: Yeah. Whole bunch of 'em, all the way down to Skid Row, huh?
CK: Central Hotel.
TS: Yeah.
YM: And --
CK: And those hotels down there.
TS: And Keji Sato's family.
CK: Right, right. Yeah.
TS: Yeah.
SF: How come there were so many hotels in Seattle? 'Cause you don't -- in a lot of towns, the Japanese didn't own that many hotels. Was there, is there kind of a reason for why there were so many in Seattle?
TS: It's a good business, and it catered to the transients 'cause we had a...
CK: Right.
TS: Lotta logging workers, railroad workers, and the whites that --
CK: Cannery workers.
TS: Cannery workers.
CK: Yeah.
TS: That went back and forth, so --
YM: And then the people were coming from Japan, I understand the N-P Hotel was one of the...
CK: First stops.
YM: Main, main --
CK: Yeah.
YM: And I remember my folks telling me when they came from Japan they used to house some of the people in the basement of Sagamiya, when they had...
TS: Oh really?
YM: Nowhere else to go. And I don't remember that, but this must have been before I was born that they would have people stay because they had nowhere else to go.
SF: These hotels, did, how were they typically run? Did the, did the wife -- was it a husband and wife kind of operation, and the wife did most of the work, or how did that, how did that go? Or did they have lots of hired help, or did most...
CK: No.
TS: No.
CK: Very little help, hired help. In fact, I don't know of any that had hired help. But they were run mainly by the families or their kids. Like I used to haul out the garbage cans and do the painting and things like that. But the mother, wife of the owner, usually did a lot of the work. Like sheets and pillows and mattress covers had to be washed between every guest, so, practically. So it, who's to do the wash? Not the man of the family, usually.
TS: That's why the wife was so happy when they went to camp. [Laughs]
CK: It could be.
YM: They probably had to do it by hand.
CK: Yeah.
YM: Not too many had washing machines...
CK: Yeah.
YM: I suppose.
CK: Like my mom was telling me, all the diapers of the kids that she had, seven boys, it's all done by hand.
TS: Oh, yeah.
CK: And then dried by the steam. But the steam went off at 10:00 p.m. by that Rainier Heat and Power Company...
YM: Oh. Oh, (yes).
CK: That used to heat up all the buildings. And so my dad would be out there fanning the diapers, so that they would dry off faster.
TS: Yeah.
CK: But they went through hell, I think.
YM: (Yes). Isseis really did suffer...
CK: Yeah.
YM: And because of the Isseis, I think that we have a comfortable life that we can...
CK: Yeah.
TS: Yeah.
YM: Lead right now.
CK: It's too bad that most of 'em died...
YM: Are gone.
CK: Off before the reparations...
YM: (Yes).
CK: Went through.
SF: If the hotel owners served mostly transients and, say probably, people who worked on the ships that came into town, that kind of thing, that sounds like it might be a little bit of a rough crowd. Did they have any problems like the Issei mother handling people? Or was that a problem? Or was there any problem of prosti -- prostitution becoming a...
CK: No, I think they're quite respectful of Japanese for some reason. And especially the Filipino people that used to work in the canneries. They were a rough crowd, but gee, my mom and dad used to have really good relationships with them. Another thing is that the, besides that type of relationship that the Japanese people had -- you know, in the running of their businesses, they were known to be so honest that the people never feared of getting gypped on any of the services that they were rendering. At least that was my feelings during that time, anyway.
SF: So like, in terms of -- what was I gonna say? Why don't I come back to that. One of the things, since you had so many Japanese hotels, did, was there a competition between the different hotels, or did they sort of work together in some kind of organization to try to avoid competition, or work together to represent the Japanese hotel owners to the whites or to the larger city?
CK: I don't recall anything like that.
TS: There was an organization, but...
CK: Yeah, but --
TS: I think they worked individually and...
CK: Yeah.
TS: Treated everyone well, basically.
YM: There was a hotel and apartment, Japanese Hotel and Apartment Association...
CK: Association, yeah.
TS: Yeah.
YM: That was --
SF: What did they do?
YM: I don't know. I was never involved.
CK: They used to have parties and...
YM: Guess they'd enjoy...
CK: Get-togethers.
YM: Enjoyed themselves.
CK: Yeah. Exchange ideas, I guess. But it wasn't, it was a non-competitive...
TS: Yeah, basically.
CK: Type of organization.
SF: So one hotel owner's family could really be good friends with other hotel family owners?
TS: Oh, yeah. Definitely.
CK: Now we said there were a lotta transients. But then again, there were a lot of permanent residents. Like in our hotel alone, there must've been about fifteen families that occupied rooms out of this 45-room hotel. So they were permanent. And they were not about to move or to get enough monies to buy a home or anything like that.
<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.