<Begin Segment 32>

MN: Now, when did you hear that the Japanese Americans could go back to California?

TY: When did I hear? It came out in the paper that they're gonna release the Japanese people to the West Coast. I think that's how it was, yeah. So boom, we got on our car, said let's go see, let's go see what California looks like now. So couple of my friends and I went in our '38 Chevrolet on a cold winter day, started to snow on the way. [Laughs] It was funny. And only thing we could see was barbed wire fence and a stake on the side of the road, and we had to find our own way, full of snow, it's snowing, and we made it back. Man, it was another place when we came back, four years later.

MN: This is '45 then, you came back, early '45?

TY: '45, yeah. Early '45, went in '45, yeah.

MN: Did you go into Little Tokyo, Los Angeles when you got to California?

TY: Sure did.

MN: What was that like?

TY: Ooh, it was a black town, man. It was a black, black town, and I just can't believe it. Blacks are loud, loud and loud and throwing everything on the street, furniture, cans, beer cans, what have you. It was a crazy, bad black town. It really was. But we found a place to stay at the old Miyako Hotel with the kurombos running it, and they gave us a room over there. And we stayed there one or two nights. I don't recall. But it was a bad town, I'm telling you. It was, it wasn't a town. It was just a savage, what do you call it, savage...

MN: Kind of like the wild wild West?

TY: Worse than that. [Laughs] Oh man, it was so bad, walked down the street, take a look at this and that, the girls would come up, the black girls would come up, "Hey, we got a room up there. Got a room up there." They're hustling, hustling everything. It was amazing. And the old black people, young people, running around midnight half naked. It was crazy. It really was, yeah. I did not believe it.

MN: Did you think that it would revert back to Little Tokyo?

TY: I kind of thought that in due time it will, yeah. I kind of thought so, yeah. But I told myself, got to chase these old blacks out of here and we got to take over again. That's what I thought. But they finally did.

MN: So you stayed at the old Miyako Hotel, which was, I think, the Civic Hotel at that time. That's on the corner of First and San Pedro?

TY: Yeah. Yeah, around there.

MN: So you stayed in, I guess, Little Tokyo -- it was called Bronzeville at the time -- you said two nights?

TY: I think we stayed there two nights, yeah.

MN: And then where did you go?

TY: Let's see, from there we went out in the field and looked over. We met a couple of our friends where we used to live, and then we went back, back to Colorado to bring our things back, our clothing, equipment, whatever else we had to bring home. So we came back home.

<End Segment 32> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.