<Begin Segment 9>

TI: Earlier you mentioned visiting Los Angeles. What was Los Angeles like for a young woman, a girl going from, because you kind of grew up in smaller communities where there weren't as many Japanese, and then you go to Los Angeles, and I'm guessing maybe like Little Tokyo, places like that, what was that like for you?

FD: I don't remember, but the family, the Ochiais who adopted my sister lived, they lived on 20th or 24th Street, which was south of Little Tokyo near Central Avenue.

TI: What would that neighborhood be called?

FD: I think it's called South Central or something. But then I'm not sure, because Central Avenue was pretty long, and I think as you go down to the higher avenues, it gets blacker. And I don't know what it's like today.

TI: But when you would go to Los Angeles, where would be some of the places you would go to as a family?

FD: It was usually to Little Tokyo, to the church there, and to do shopping for Japanese foodstuffs.

TI: And where would you go shopping?

FD: I don't remember the stores. And I do remember that there was one shop that we used to go to often that was a jewelry store run by the Iseri family. Some years ago when I happened to visit Los Angeles, I walked down East First Street to see if I could recognize any of it. And the store that used to be the jewelry store is something else. And then they had the names of the owner's predecessors inlaid, that is... anyway, inlaid on the sidewalk in front of each business establishment. And I was sort of surprised that they didn't mention the Iseri jewelry store because they had somebody else's name there. So I figured, well, I guess they didn't know that the Iseris owned that building years ago.

TI: That's interesting. You should mention it to someone.

FD: I didn't know who to mention it to. [Laughs]

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2016 Densho. All Rights Reserved.