Densho Digital Archive - Bob Santos Interview I (denshovh-sbob

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TI: Now, going back to the Chinatown/International District, so the Japanese are coming back, you have this whole different sort of change in the neighborhood, a lot more military influence and different communities in there. What happened as the Japanese came back? Was there, what did you observe happening?

BS: Well, Uwajimaya opened, and we stayed at the NP Hotel, and down Main Street the drugstore opened. The, where they made the mochi, right on the corner, Sixth and Main?

TI: Oh, Sagamiya?

BS: Yeah, Sagamiya, that opened up again. The drugstore next to them opened up. Gaigoken opened up again. No, that didn't open up again. It reverted back to the original owners. Maneki opened up in the NP Hotel, in our building. So we saw a lot of new businesses from the old, from the old neighborhood coming back. Higo's was opened. Remember going into Uwajimaya and stealing ginger, and I think it was Tomio --

TI: I'll tell Tomio. [Laughs]

BS: No, they know about it. They, the old man used to tell them, when I came in, they said, "Watch this guy." So Tomio was a little bit younger, but when I came in I was, they were following me around, man. And that's the only thing I took from them, was ginger. They had the jar, and I'd take it and I'd just plop it in my mouth. And then, it's just like when you, you go to Uwajimaya you do it yourself, and you see grapes there, you're gonna test the grape. I was testing their ginger. [Laughs]

TI: Yeah, I think, when I was a kid it was Wah Sang down there.

BS: Yeah, on King Street.

TI: Yeah.

BS: Yeah. But it was a whole, seems to be a revival, but not all the businesses reopened. Not all the businesses. The businesses I remember was Chick's ice cream in the old Bush Hotel, Shigeko Uno's husband Chick. Chick's Ice Creamery, they brought in the new ice cream, the whipped ice cream.

TI: The sort of soft, soft ice cream?

BS: The soft ice cream. They were the first ones to open up, and that became very popular right off the bat. And I never saw, I mean, the families might've, might've felt some backlash or seen backlash, but we as kids, me as a kid, never noticed that, that it would be pronounced that I would remember that. It seemed like it, just one day they were gone, one day everything opened up again, and I never thought about what the repercussions were about opening up, about outsiders coming in, yelling and screaming. I didn't see any of that.

TI: Okay. But going back to Chinatown/International District, changes there, I mean, during the war it seemed like that was a pretty wild place to be, and now with the Japanese coming back, opening their stores, did it start changing, or did it stay pretty wild?

BS: When you're going, when we're going into the '50s, the Japanese businesspeople, I don't know if the Jackson Street Community Council was established then, but when the Japanese came back it restored, it brought back to life the Japanese, the Jackson Street Community Council. Frank Hattori, some, Terry Toda, some of these guys became, they became, back into leadership, the Jackson Street Community Council, and they started working together with Hong Chin, who built the Four Seas restaurant -- Chin Hong? Chin Hong. And a guy named Ken MacDonald, Ken MacDonald's an attorney, and he was sort of a leftist. Ken MacDonald represented a lot of the so-called Communists at that time, and he still has his law practice downtown. His son was Secretary of Transportation under Gary, Gary Locke.

TI: Yeah, Doug, Doug MacDonald. Right.

BS: So that, Ken MacDonald, and they formed the International, the International Improvement organization. It was during the time the Jackson Street Community Council was being incorporated into a citywide organization because they were so successful. It was the Japanese businessmen who came back who really got involved in trying to clean up the International District/Chinatown area.