<Begin Segment 4>

SF: Now, now it comes back to me, what I was gonna ask you about, and that was, especially if you had like fifteen permanent families living in the hotel, it's sort of like, you had kind of a small community or almost this semi-family thing, probably, right?

TS: Oh, yeah.

SF: The same customers probably came back when they came into town and all that?

CK: That's right. Yeah. Well, you're sure to have the cannery workers come back every year. During the off-season, they go down to California and harvest vegetables and stuff like that. But the ones that went up to the canneries would...

YM: Alaska.

CK: Come back down. And well, they'd have quite a bit of monies. And so they'll pay off their debts or anything like that. And that's another reason why I think the cannery workers and transient workers were so trustful of the Japanese, because they allowed them credit until they could find a way to pay back their debts.

SF: And this was regardless of what race people were or whatever...

CK: Yeah.

SF: I mean, it was everybody got treated...

CK: I think so. Yeah.

SF: Yeah. Right. One of the -- like, in the hotel, did you all have baths or would they go to the, did people go to the --

CK: It was a community bath -- I mean, it was a bath located at the end of the hallway or something like that.

SF: So they would --

CK: And they shared toilets and bathrooms, yeah.

SF: So they --

YM: They were -- excuse me. There were several bathhouses run by the Japanese...

CK: Oh, yeah.

YM: In the community. And this was just like a Nihonburo or Japanese bathtub -- bath --

TS: Yeah.

YM: I don't know what you'd call it.

CK: Bathhouse, yeah

TS: Nihonburo -- yeah.

YM: And there was three or four of 'em, weren't there?

TS: Yeah. Hinode, and Hashidate --

YM: Hashidate.

CK: Hashidate.

TS: Yeah.

YM: There was another one --

CK: I think there was one more.

TS: On Fifth Avenue. (Also, a small nihonburo on the southeast corner of 9th and Washington street.)

YM: King Street or, I didn't go that --

CK: Well, King Street was Hinode.

TS: Fifth Avenue. Miyakoyu, it says here.

CK: Oh, Miyakoyu. Okay. Yeah, that was it.

YM: Oh. Oh, okay.

CK: I think there were three, though.

TS: Yeah, yeah.

YM: So lotta the hotel people, like one of our friends, well, they'd come to the, the family would all come to the bathhouse. And they'd stop by at the end, going home, to stop by at our, Sagamiya and have a treat, and then go home. So I remember that, that whole family used to come for, maybe Saturdays they'd come for a bath there.

SF: So was the bath kind of a necessity because some places didn't have a shower or a bathtub, or was it more like a social occasion, the whole family might come in on a Saturday and --

CK: I think that's it, yeah. It's just like in Japan, I think. They may have their own bathtubs in their homes, but occasionally, they go out to a hotel, and then just stay, just to enjoy the bath. And here at Hinode or Hashidate, and, there were people that even lived in substantially comfortable homes, and I'm sure they had bathtubs in there, but they would still come down on a Sunday or a Saturday evening, and enjoy a nice, refreshing bath.

TS: Plus after baseball games --

CK: Yeah, right. All the football teams...

TS: Yeah.

CK: Used to go there, clean up, and get rid of some of their wounds and hurts, I guess.

SF: What, how did the bathtubs -- or maybe you can explain, for those of us who aren't familiar with it, what the procedure was to getting, to getting a bath, in terms of getting the towels and the, what you were supposed to do.

CK: Well, you'd be issued a towel as you go in. And then you go in and take off your clothes. And then the -- you first had to wash yourself off. And there'd be these wooden tubs and wooden stools that you could squat on. And you would, basically soap yourself completely, and then wash it off with this water from the bath or from the faucet. Then you would step into the bathtub, once that, you find yourself cleaned up of any dirt or grime or anything like that.

YM: It was sorta like a square pool...

CK: Yeah.

YM: Like. And on the edges there'd be a place to kinda sit.

CK: Sit down.

TS: Yeah.

SF: How, how long would you sit in the warm part, after it's kind of...

YM: As long as you can relax, I suppose.

CK: As long as you could stand it, I guess. Because they heated it up quite a bit. But they'd have a cold faucet in one corner. And you'd find a lotta people surrounding that area, as it pours into the hot bath. But, nobody really made it lukewarm, so that the others can't enjoy it.

SF: And there was a different section for women?

YM: Women and men were in, separated there.

SF: I sort of recall in the Panama one that, there was a divider or something between the...

TS: Yeah. (In the Hashidate there was a wall dividing the men's bath and the women's.)

CK: Yeah.

SF: Males and the females?

CK: That's Hashidate.

TS: Hashidate.

YM: (Yes).

SF: But you could probably -- I mean, if you were not so nice, you could probably look over, look under or something, right?

CK: No. You don't, you couldn't look under, but I saw some -- where they could stand on the edge and look over. [Laughs]

YM: [Laughs] I didn't know that.

TS: Yeah. Don't you remember...

YM: No.

TS: I said hi to you?

YM: Oh, yeah.

TS: No. I didn't have the guts to look.

CK: No. They're -- that, that kinda prank always happened.

TS: Oh, yeah.

YM: And I know, I remember when we were kids, we used to swim one way and then come back. But not enough for older people to do that. But as children, we were swimming in there, like a swimming pool.

SF: It's sort of like you could as a kid, a boy, you might be able to go into the women's section as a small child?

YM: Oh, yeah. I think so.

SF: It's that sort of thing.

TS: Japan, they, someplace, don't, men or women...

YM: Oh, (yes). Sure.

TS: Take --

CK: But very few now.

TS: Yeah. Used to be.

CK: Yeah.

TS: There was no men and lady...

YM: It's communal.

TS: It was just one common bath.

YM: Yeah.

SF: And everybody just sort of averted their eyes, or it wasn't a big deal?

YM: It's not a big deal --

TS: It's not a big deal.

CK: It's not a big deal.

YM: I don't think it was.

CK: Yeah.

TS: Well, incidentally, I still golf with Eddy Sano, (one of the two sons of the Sano family who had the Hashidate furo.)

CK: Yeah?

TS: (Golf with Eddy) every Tuesday. So...

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.