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JB: Yeah, Denver was a great place where we met a lot of people because of the store. My brother and his friends would be working in the back room. In those days, like before the war in L.A., if you worked for a Japanese company, you ate breakfast, lunch and dinner there. The store would feed you, it would feed all the workers, so it was like a family. And I remember in the middle room was where our packing room was, pack manju to send to camps or back east, Chicago or anywhere. And in the packing room, some guys would come out and we'd listen to music all the time, we had jazz records that we would play and things like that. So it was a social scene also, besides being a store. I don't think we made any money, but we had a lot of fun. [Laughs] But soon, like I say, people started leaving.

BN: And then the business declined.

JB: Yeah, so we closed up and my brother brought my parents back.

BN: How did you feel? Did you want to stay there or were you ready to go back?

JB: No, I definitely, I think by then, Min Yasui had gotten into my mind, and what a terrible thing happened, civil rights and all that, what a horrible thing that it was that the government did to us. And so I was already becoming an activist, so I wanted to go to Chicago and New York, and I didn't want to come back to California. In fact, yes, I remember now. Min made me a Republican. He said, "Don't vote Democrat, they put you in camp." So I became a Republican. And he said, "And never go back to California, they kicked you out of California." I said, "Yeah, I'm never going back to California." So Min was already in my brain, so I was parroting everything he said. So I didn't want to come back to California, I wanted to go to Chicago and New York to study design, or something like that, fashion design. Only, my parents wanted me to come back, so of course, I came back here because there was no one else to support them. So I came back to California.

BN: Because your older siblings were on their own.

JB: Married, yeah, they were already married, so I was the only one left.

BN: Did they stay...

JB: My sister stayed in Detroit, Michigan, and Yas stayed in Denver, then he wanted to come back to California, too, so they moved back. And my parents moved back and I followed them and about two or three months later I came back. But like I say, Min was a big influence in my life at that time, because I was working for him and I felt that, no, I'm never going back to California.

BN: But you did.

JB: Yeah, I did. [Laughs]

BN: And then you mentioned when you came back you worked for JACL and for someone else?

JB: Kashu Realty on the west side, and then I worked for a baking company during the day as my full time job, and JACL was my nighttime job. That's where I met Edison Uno, Saburo Kido, and Tats Kushida was the head of JACL.

BN: What was that district?

JB: Pacific Southwest JACL.

BN: Where was that?

JB: It was right in the Miyako Hotel, right in Little Tokyo. Before they tore down Miyako Hotel, there was an underground Ginza bar there, which is now Horikawa's. And Mas Hamasu was singing there, and it was like a Japanese American nightclub.

BN: And then where did you live?

JB: We lived... excuse me, on the west side. My brother first lived back in Virgil, he was living in Virgil, and I got an apartment for my mother and father and myself on the west side.

BN: And what does "west side" mean? Because I think it has a different meaning today.

JB: Yes. This west side is like Jefferson Street, Adams, it's what was formerly known as Seinan district, where Centenary church was, and there's a big Japanese group there. I was there until I got married, I had my children, and then I decided I wanted to move into an area that is not all Japanese. So I wanted to be diversified with African Americans, Latinos, Jewish, so we moved to Granada Hills, which, they had this Eichler home, and Eichler home was known to be a place, a very liberal place to live, and there was a very diverse neighborhood. Because when we lived in L.A. at that time, you couldn't live in certain places, they had your boundaries. And Granada Hills was wide open, anybody could live there, so that's why I chose Granada Hills.

BN: And this is a few years later.

JB: Yes, 1963 we moved to Granada Hills. Until then we lived in the west side, is where my children were born. It was a while, I guess, the whole neighborhood was just Japanese American, and you stayed within your group.

BN: And you wanted to break away from that?

JB: Uh-huh, wanted my kids, by then I had six, five kids. And so I wanted them to grow up in a diverse neighborhood. That was important to me, that they grow up knowing all different kinds of people.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2018 Densho. All Rights Reserved.