<Begin Segment 22>

BN: And then I wanted to ask you to go back to Monterey Park. Why did you choose to buy a house there?

HK: Oh, well, we looked around, because we were looking, we looked at some places in the Crenshaw area, and where else did we look? We looked for, and we ended up looking at places in Monterey Park. I guess one place we found was okay for us, and that was in the middle '60s, so we were able to find a place. And then we got a house for under $30,000. [Laughs] And it's worth more than that now.

EA: Just a little.

BN: And then were you consciously looking at... because both Crenshaw and Monterey Park, there were kind of Japanese American communities, were you kind of looking for that?

HK: I think that was part of it. Because there were a lot more Japanese people in Monterey Park than there are now.

BN: I mean, can you talk, I went to get to JANM and stuff, too, but just quickly, can you talk a little bit about, kind of, how Monterey Park has kind of changed over time? Because you've been there for fifty plus years.

HK: How has it changed? Well, I guess because of the influx of the Chinese coming in, so for a while it was known as New Chinatown. But for my wife and I, it was no major deal, because we just went along with our own business. And so the change in population was not a major change for us. Because our neighbors, we were lucky, we had very nice neighbors.

BN: Were the neighbors kind of the same neighbors also for many years?

HK: No, the neighbors have changed. But luckily, the one on one side of us has been there for several years and that turned out to be a very, very nice neighbor.

BN: Did you have kids?

HK: No, we did not have kids.

BN: You did not, okay. I never knew that. So you put in thirty years, right, as a teacher?

HK: Teacher, yes.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.