<Begin Segment 36>

MN: Now, you mentioned Kango was very upset before because of what had happened to Bunker Hill. Can you tell us what Bunker Hill was like before the CRA came in?

YK: Yeah. Well, Bunker Hill was, mostly built in the 1880s, 1890s, the early part of the nineteenth century, or the twentieth century. So most of the buildings were wood frame and stucco, even the hotel buildings. I guess the tallest building was about, oh, about seven, eight stories, but they were walk ups on the side of the hill, and most of the buildings were, the top had mansions that were only about one or two stories. So everything was deteriorating, and there was crime in the area, vagrants were living there, and to keep warm they were starting fires, and so the fire department was being called all the time. Health conditions weren't good, and it was becoming a skid row in a sense. They had bars there and so forth. So it was definitely deteriorating. And because, too, no building had been built for years, most of the buildings were built by the 1920s. And so nobody would want to go in there, so that's part of redevelopment to go in the areas where nobody wants to build new because of what's around them. And at that time, it became almost a total clearance project as we got the bad rep of being the federal bulldozer. Because at that time, it was total clearance. So that's how (it developed) and so Kango was concerned that, hey, we don't come in and wipe them all out.

MN: And Bunker Hill was also very famous for Angel's Flight, which was built in 1901, and CRA put that in storage.

YK: Yeah. Well, Angel's Flight, right, was built in 1901, and way back, they were talking about actually removing the entire hill, because it was impeding the westerly progress of downtown L.A. But that was unfeasible, so they had actually, 1903, they built the tunnel to give access to the west, and Angel's Flight was there next to it. And it functioned for about seventy years. Within 19, about 1969, we had built the new street system on the west side of Bunker Hill, but now we had to build the east side, and that was going to be a multi, two-level street system. And, too, we wanted to make the streets more, so their access to Bunker Hill wasn't so steep, so we had to cut off some of Bunker Hill, too. Well, we even cut off more, because we knew that development as it took place would have to excavate about three stories. So we took it all the way down to the lower street system. So we removed the whole top of Bunker Hill, and at that time it was very expensive to move dirt. But the sheriff's station at Monterey Park, there, they needed all the dirt they can have. So we got it done for about a quarter of what it would have cost to move all the dirt. So we moved as much as we could there. But then Angel's Flight couldn't function anymore, and yet, the preservation association said, "You promised to put it back, put it back." In fact, Dick Mitchell finally said, "Can we just stick it back there?" I said, "Yeah, but it's going to nothing. First the grades are wrong, then you get up there, it's just vacant land, parking lots. We're ten years away before we build anything up there." And so they would keep after us, so finally I came up with the answer. I said, if we said two years away, that's too soon, so I always said, "We're three to five years away." And that kept going three to five years away, and that worked for about two decades. [Laughs] But anyway, I was the dirty guy on Angel's Flight. But we finally eventually did put it back when it made sense to put it back.

<End Segment 36> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.