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TI: So Reno, how long were you there?

RW: Couple years. I have a kid sister, so she's born in L.A. in '47, so we came back just before that, after the exclusion was lifted. And we're in Eastside by then, so we had to have been here for a little while, because I think our first destination was South Central. We lived near the historic black cultural center, the Dunbar Hotel and all that kind of stuff. And then the move comes to the Eastside.

TI: And is that kind of your first memories, are more on the Eastside?

RW: Dunbar, like I have real faint recollections. Like we lived in the store, we lived upstairs, kind of in the loft that looked down on the counter. So I have some recollection of that, but not a whole lot.

TI: And what kind of store was that?

RW: Laundry.

TI: Laundry. And then same thing in East L.A.?

RW: East L.A., my dad starts working for a dry cleaner, and so it's a small house. You know how things are in recollection? That thing had to be four hundred square feet. But at the time, it didn't strike me that it was, had any limitations.

TI: Right, right. Because from your perspective as a toddler or something, you look around and it looks big.

RW: Well, it sounded like, when we used to come home, the routine was my mom gets out the key, and the rest of us take off our shoe. And as soon as she opens the door, we're out there killing cockroaches. And that was normal, right?

TI: [Laughs] Get 'em before they scatter?

RW: It was Eastside, but it was marginal. But it was amazing to me that when my dad, whatever he was doing, saved enough money, and when the down payment on the house that I grew up in for most of my life, he paid cash on the down. I mean literally, I remember him bringing the paper bag.

TI: And what kind of dwelling or house was this?

RW: It's a three-bedroom in City Terrace. It had a good-sized yard, eventually we had cherry trees in the front and all kinds of fruit trees in the back.

TI: So tell me a little bit about growing up in that neighborhood and that house. Who were your friends and what did you do?

RW: Well, my neighborhood was largely Jewish and Chicano. And so it was really running around with them, but I went to Maryknoll. So my days, I was with Japanese American kids. But even then, I think our geographic distribution, because we had different buses that drove us home, so I'm on the Eastside trip, right? So I know the kids more on the Eastside, but there was the Westside bus. And then there's kind of the Downtown bus, there were a lot of people in Downtown in boarding houses and things like that. But on Eastside, there was a fair number, and we had not quite a Little Tokyo, but First Street had Brotherhood Market and had the Japanese Hospital. Had restaurants, there was enough of a nexus for community to interact, that was from Eastside, Boyle Heights. And it was a short streetcar ride straight into Little Tokyo. So getting to, like, Nishi Hongwanji or whatever, those kind of things, was just really easy. But it's with a mixture, like you have a Japanese American sort of backdrop, but you're largely running with, I'm largely running with Chicanos. Earlier on with more Jewish kids, but they moved out.

TI: So the question is, you mentioned earlier your dad was Buddhist, you're going to Maryknoll, which is Catholic, why Maryknoll and not...

RW: My sense is their perception is that you get a better education. And so I think like in hindsight, I think tuition was only fifteen dollars. Back then, that was a huge sacrifice, but just didn't recognize it. But I'm pretty sure that their view of it is that you got a better education, and that's kind of an Asian, Japanese immigrant story.

TI: And so you would go to school with Japanese Americans, but in your neighborhood you'd hang out more with the Jewish and Chicano?

RW: Latino.

TI: Latino, okay. How about other Japanese or Japanese American community things? Whether it was at the Buddhist Temple, or what were some things that you did growing up?

RW: Well, because my dad was Issei, so he's, at different times, because it's kind of a rotation, was kenjinkaii president. Like church-wise, we went to Nichiren Buddhist Church, which is a different sect than Jodo Shinshu, But still on Eastside, so the kind of things of, like, Obon, Shogatsu, that all kind of goes on. And my mother was involved with Nishi Hongwanji. There's kind of a women's group called Junior Matrons, and she was active in that, so we get hauled into that. And the other aspect is my granddad, Little Tokyo has got a number of hotels on the north side. So he lived in one of the hotels, the Sato Hotel, which would be like the Panama Hotel in Seattle. And he was anmasan, did massage, but he liked his independence, so I went to Boy Scout meetings at the Maryknoll troop, Friday nights, but I'd overnight with my grandfather, because I'd go to the troop meetings and hang out with him. So there's a lot of Little Tokyo kind of contact for me. When I talk to Brian Kito and the folks that had stores here, my mom's best friend had a beauty shop above what we called Joseph's Men's Store. And that tagline was "Joseph's Men's Store: Clothes for Mr. Short."

TI: Oh, I remember that, yeah.

RW: But upstairs, there was Futaba beauty salon, my mom would be there, so we'd hang out there and at my grandfather's. And next door to Futaba's, there was this room where Hawaiian guys hung out. And the main guy was a guy named Creepy, and he was the bookie in J-Town. If you saw him, you'd know why he's called Creepy. So there was a lot of, like, J-Town, I ran around in J-Town. Even though we started that, we were at Nichiren, we'd do a lot of things at Nishi, because that was the main temple, had events.

TI: How about Japanese school? Did you attend Japanese school?

RW: No, I didn't go to Japanese school because I had Japanese classes at Maryknoll. And plus, because my dad is Issei and my mom's Kibei-Nisei, it's not like I'm fluent in all this stuff, but relatives and cohorts, I can speak Japanese and I can read hiragana, there's a few things I can do. So they didn't push that. On Eastside, there's a number of Japanese American or Japanese cultural institutes, kind of were language schools, so in Eastside it's Chuo Gakuen, and that was a language school during the day, but in the evenings it was judo, kendo, that kind of stuff, and I did do kendo.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.