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AH: Let me take a break right now and ask you a couple of questions, because otherwise I won't remember the ones I wanted to ask you. [Interruption] When you mentioned the sister that died and then you mentioned that the sister was older than you by three years, can we put a name to those sisters?

SH: Yes. My sister who died was Misao, and my older sister was Tetsuko. But somehow she came by the name, she decided I think that Mary would be a better name, so she went by Mary.

AH: Yes, I noticed that was even on her obituary, it said Mary.

SH: Yes. But she was given the name Tetsuko. And my father had certain ideas about which characters he used for it, and so Tetsuko was supposed to be "a child of philosophy." [Laughs]

AH: Then another question I had for you that came up was you were talking about your father having the Harvard Classics in the household, but then you were talking about the language that was spoken largely in the household was Japanese.

SH: Yes.

AH: Your father apparently knew English, then, or at least had a reading knowledge of it.

SH: Yes, yes. He was not only able to read English, but he had customers that came in. Most of the customers were Americans, and, in fact, because he was a tailor, the biggest customers were businessmen that came in and had him do the tailor-made suits.

AH: Then another question is, was the Larimer address 1941 that you were brought up in?

SH: Yes, yes. And as we grew older, then... we always lived in the back of that shop, but as we grew older we had to go to Japanese school, too.

AH: Uh-huh. Now, the final question I have at this stage is a little bit about the demography of the Larimer Street area where you lived. You talked about the businesses being in there, and you talked about your school that you went to having Hispanics and others there. But what was, this prewar Larimer Street area, to what extent was that Japanese Americans living there?

SH: Let's see. I would say that probably half of that block was Japanese businesses. There were cafes, two cafes, there were two mercantile shops where they sold not only art objects in one of the stores, more arty sort of things, the other store was one where there were... they sold rice and shoyu and different things like that. And then there was a pool hall, and then down the block there was... let's see. There were two restaurants, oh, a Japanese store where they had like a fish market and they sold tofu there.

AH: Do you remember the names of the restaurants?

SH: One was the Continental Cafe, and the other was George's Cafe.

AH: Okay, okay. And those were both Japanese-run restaurants?

SH: Yes.

AH: Okay.

SH: And then the pool hall next door, I don't remember exactly the name of it, but there was a pool hall. And then a couple of doors down, I don't remember whether it was right at the beginning or not, there was a sort of a Mexican tavern.

AH: And was the population heavily bachelor Issei there or was it mostly families at that time?

SH: Well, they were families.

AH: And so that transformation had already taken place then by that time, when you were coming of age, right?

SH: Yes, yes. We had friends to go to school with and all.

AH: And so you had a lot of cohorts, people your age, that you could play with and things that were Japanese?

SH: I wouldn't say a lot, but we had several that we could play with. Maybe not quite a dozen in my age group, maybe four or five.

AH: Okay, Frank, questions?

FA: So families with kids, what kind of things did you do? Did you play games, get in trouble?

SH: Well, we would have games like... well, the roller skating was the best for my girlfriends and I. But we also went out and played marbles and Kick the Can, and hiding games like that. And it was kind of fun. We looked forward to those days when we could go out and play because it was fun. We didn't like staying in our own yard.

FA: Did you get in trouble?

SH: Not so much. I think I was pretty obedient, so I didn't do things to get in trouble. My brothers did, though.

FA: What did they do?

SH: Oh, I think they would go around and look for things that they could do that weren't supposed to be, like going a little further than they were supposed to be and all. But it was sort of a fun neighborhood. And, you know, we would make up games, like there was a hotel above us and the rails, stairs that went down, then it was not only fun to jump the stairs and do different things, but then we learned to hang on to those stairs to see if we could go down and exercise without knowing, you know, it was fun. And learning to jump off the roof of little places and things like that, using that little tiny roof that was actually a basement, I think, going below, as a stage. And we would have fun playing up there and playing make believe as we grew older. [Laughs] It was very inventive now when you think of it.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.