<Begin Segment 3>

MN: Now what area of Boyle Heights did your family live in?

MS: You know where the Japanese hospital is? That's on First Street, and they lived about a mile away, south of Whittier Boulevard, around the same area, so we lived in Boyle Heights, but we didn't live near the Japanese community. Yeah.

MN: Now, in comparison to the other homes at that time, would you consider your home small, medium, or large?

MS: What?

MN: Your home that you lived in, you grew up in.

MS: What, it was what kind of home?

MN: Was it, was it a small home, was it a large home?

MS: Middle size, I guess. We had two houses on the property, so we had eight, eight people in the family, so my brother and I lived in the back house, the second house. And we had a couple of other roomers there, Ben Oshima and Mr. Nakayama, but, but we had a lot of room, lived a comfortable life.

MN: Now your father was doing fairly well with his business. In 1932, when the Los Angeles Olympic --

MS: Well, depression at '32.

MN: '32, but when the Japanese Olympic team came over, they came to your house.

MS: Yeah, they visited. My father, having a sporting goods store, tried to befriend the members of the Japanese Olympic team, and I remember some of them visiting the house 'cause the fifty yard dash, Yoshioka, who was the fifty yard dash champ, came over. I remember him. But I was still young, only eleven years old.

MN: Did they stay at your home?

MS: What?

MN: Did they stay at your home?

MS: No. No, they lived in the Olympic Village. They visited.

MN: Now, your family, your father liked to invite a lot of people. Did a lot of the Japanese naval officers stay at your house?

MS: Not, well, since he was in business we had a lot of visitors, and when the renshu kantai, the Japanese training ships came in, some of them were invited to, to visit our home. Most of them wanted to visit an American home, so they welcomed the chance. Then my mother was a pretty good cook, so she fed them.

MN: So when they came to your house, what sort of activities did they do at your home?

MS: I don't know. I don't remember what activities they would, but my father used to try to orient them to the Japanese style of living at that particular time. If you remember, in 1910 the Japanese immigrants were denied American citizenship, so it wasn't, it wasn't a good period, time to, to really show them much of America, because at that time they weren't as welcome as they are now.

MN: But your father was very active socially and it sounds like he was very, he was a community leader in the Japanese --

MS: What?

MN: Your father was a Japanese American community leader.

MS: Yeah, well, in Little Tokyo, since he had a business there and his business was oriented towards Japanese, businesses in Japan. It sounds like it was a good period, but it was in the Depression, so business wasn't that good.

MN: So if your father's customers couldn't pay, how did he deal with that?

MS: The what?

MN: If your father's customers could not pay, how did your father deal with these customers?

MS: Well, usually they, my father packed the sewing machine so the legs wouldn't break and things like that, and they took 'em on their own training ship back to Japan, so most of these guys training were officer candidates, so the officers of the ships themselves were ones that could afford to buy, not the, not the trainees. So they, in order to take care of their own parts, but when he accommodated, so my father didn't have to ship, pay for the shipping.

MN: So these Japanese officers who come on the ships, they bought a lot of your father's sewing machines?

MS: Yeah, for their family.

MN: And they took it back to Japan?

MS: Yeah. Well, that's why the, Japan didn't have anything anyway, and they were buying for the home or they probably were buying all kinds of weapons, too, but my father wasn't in the weapon business.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.