Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Kanji Sahara Interview
Narrator: Kanji Sahara
Interviewer: Brian Niiya
Location: Torrance, California
Date: October 5, 2018
Densho ID: ddr-densho-1000-448-3

[Correct spelling of certain names, words and terms used in this interview have not been verified.]

<Begin Segment 3>

BN: So then where did they live?

KS: We lived in... okay, first of all, my parents, they looked like they moved around all the time, because they always talked about where they lived there or where they lived there.

BN: But this is before you were born.

KS: Yeah, before I was born. So then right now there's a place called Koreatown, but before the war, that used to be a Japanese ghetto. So then before the war and even after the war, there was a restrictive housing covenant in Los Angeles, so the Japanese could live in only twenty percent of the area of Los Angeles, and one was called Uptown. And Uptown was on both sides of Olympic Boulevard, from between around Vermont to Western. So after the war our family lived on the north side of Olympic, on a street called Dewey. And on that street, from Dewey to where we lived, was 100 percent Japanese. From where we lived north to the next street was 100 percent non-Japanese. So the line between, in the restrictive housing covenant was in your backyard. You lived south of that, it was Japanese, north of that, non-Japanese. And then I didn't realize it, but I just played with the people that lived in that ghetto area. And then the school that we went to was called Hobart, so then all of us used to walk together every morning to Hobart, and maybe that might have been about a mile away. But Hobart had both Japanese and non-Japanese.

BN: So what street did you live on?

KS: Dewey. The name of our street is Dewey.

BN: That was kind of the dividing line?

KS: No. See, on Dewey, the part of Dewey that's from Olympic to halfway up the block, was 100 percent Japanese. And from there to the next street was 100 percent non-Japanese. So then the dividing line was the middle of the block. So the south of it was Japanese, north of it was non-Japanese. And I think all the streets around there was divided like that.

BN: I wonder why it would be in the middle of the block and not...

KS: I don't know, but that's how it was. So then that's where we lived after we came back from Japan. Before they went to Japan, before I was born, they lived on the south side of Dewey Avenue. So like I said, that school was a lot of Japanese there, and then most of the children were Nisei. I think there was one Japanese family on our block, the parents were Nisei, so their children would be Sansei. But everybody else, the students were Nisei. And then at our school, the principal knew that children didn't speak English, so when you went to school, you had to go to kindergarten for two years. And then after the end of the first year, you learned English, so now you could do regular kindergarten work. So I think like myself, before I started kindergarten, I was just speaking Japanese. So once, I remembered I had to go to the hospital, so my oldest sister was teaching me English words so that when I get to the hospital, I was supposed to speak. So I got a crash course in how to speak English when I go to the hospital. But anyway, at that elementary school, you learned English in the first year of kindergarten, and then now you're ready for the regular work.

BN: Was there a Japanese name for that community?

KS: Yeah, the Japanese name for that community was Uemachi. Ue means "up," just like Uptown. So then we had Uemachi, and then there's Japanese town, Nihonmachi.

BN: So because you were kind of right on the boundary line, were your friends both Japanese and non-Japanese?

KS: No, the friends were 100 percent Japanese. Now, there were a lot of... first of all, I don't think there was any mixing between the Japanese and the non-Japanese. And then like my mother used to go work, too. So then after the kids went to school, then I think she took the streetcar or something and went to work. But over there, when the kids went to school, everybody walked. And the parents never went to school, so it was the job of the older children to look after the younger children. And then, now, like if you're sick and you have to have a note or something, then the oldest sister would have to write the note to the teacher saying that you were sick and so forth like that. But the main thing was that the children all walked together to the school. It was the job of the older children to look after the younger children.

BN: What percentage of the school then was Japanese?

KS: I'm not sure what the percentage was. Maybe twenty or thirty percent of whatever.

BN: So not half, but a significant...

KS: Yeah, I'm not exactly sure.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2018 Densho. All Rights Reserved.