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VY: Let's see. Back to Boyle Heights, is there anything else you want to talk about, just about the neighborhood, what you remember growing up there, what that was like, the different experiences you had, what your neighbors were like, the languages you heard around you all the time, the stores?

NO: So next door was Hazel, who bought the store later. She was Japanese, and next-next door was Vera, Richard, Dickie, and Carol Hernandez, and they were Mexican American and they were Catholic. And since you're close, you go to each other's family birthday parties or weddings or events, things of that nature. But below their house were the Kanes, who were from Oklahoma, and they came to Boyle Heights. And we all got together on Halloween, it's big in our family, of course, because my parents' birthdays, and we would have barbecues. We really didn't have a lot of food or things, but we had a lot of, I guess, community spirit or integration. I mean, we didn't see color, we were just neighbors, and we could call upon each other for any kind of emergency. But we're kind of peculiar, we eat fish from the fish man, raw, and we eat gobo, which is a root, and so people had to see different kinds of foods. And so it was a great time because Carol Ann, who was younger than me, loved rice, but she would put milk and sugar in it, which I couldn't quite understand. But rice is rice, and I liked enchiladas, tacos, burritos, tamales, and my mother loved it, and my father loved it, too. And so we had potato soup from the Russian people, and it goes far, you could serve a lot of people. So food is kind of a binding way to get to know people, break bread.

But down the street was Zuckerman's, which they had clothing stores. And for special occasions, my mother would take me there, but most of my clothes were hand-sewn by my mother, because those days, the ladies would sew, and she sewed my wedding dress, even. So we would go there and meet the Jewish people, and my father, it was called Brooklyn Avenue, because there were all the stores up and down the street. But eventually, as time goes, people move. And unfortunately, when I was ready to buy a house, my mother didn't want me to come back to buy a house there. Because the Sakatas were moving, they were the cleaners, dry cleaners, and they didn't want me to move there, they wanted me to move out. But I would keep coming back, I would come back for judo, bring my children, take them to eat at the same places, go to Garfield High School reunions where I was a student. My husband is also from the area and his family lived right by East L.A. College. So for us, it's home. So probably after this interview I'll go there to pick up some things, and I think when I see some of the old cooks at the El Tepeyac, we recognize each other because my father's house is just around the corner from there, and we're still going. But now that there's a whole group of new customers, but when they see us older folks, they know we're from way back.

But Boyle Heights is experiencing gentrification, and it's good and bad. My father said, "Hold on to the property because this is close to Los Angeles and it's going to be very significant in the future." But I just had too much to do. Whenever I do something, I'm a hundred ten percent in it, and the house was sold to the Mexican family, very nice family. And so I don't own any property there anymore, but it's fun to see the houses with the little Japanese shrubs, still. And to see a rock placed in a way that when you go to Japan, you see it the same way. So there's kind of things left there that symbolize that we were there.

VY: Why do you think your mom didn't want you to move back to the neighborhood?

NO: I know, it really troubled me, it really troubled me. I think part of it was, here I am, I'm the one that got to go to private school, got to travel a little more with the drum and bugle corps, went to UCLA, which she didn't want me to do that either, by the way. She said, "It's too big, too far, too many people. Go to an East L.A. college," and I did. So I got married very young, because I wanted more than what the neighborhood could offer at the time. So my husband literally paid for my education, everything I am today. So I do want to give him a nod, because he's the guy that I've been with for fifty-five years, and it's all the life experiences we've shared through the years. And his camp story is different. His parents became sharecroppers after the war in Watsonville and Reedley, and finally came south to Los Angeles and they opened a mom and pop store with four children living in the back, and then finally bought a house on Roscommon. But that family, I have to thank them for their support because they put up... I'm like drama, stockade diary, and they didn't have that feeling towards camp like our family did. But I think the stockade was a very severe situation, and it was an important story to be told. And so when I have events with Tuna Canyon or Tule Lake, they all come, they're pretty wonderful. And because their point of view was it happened, and we are okay. So I bought a brick in honor of my husband's parents and proposed it. His sister came to see it, and I think it really meant a lot to them, because it's not all about me, it's about all of us. And I think she was... it was important for her to see the reunion. They had a lot of pictures, and she got to be with her cousin, so to speak, they were people who helped them after the war, stored their belongings in the barn, the Kiyomoto family, and I think that everyone has a different story. There's a mug at Manzanar that says, "Ten thousand people, ten thousand stories."

So although my resettlement story is not as difficult as the members of our community center where I reside now, the San Fernando Valley community center was born from the war, because people lived in a trailer camp, three hundred families, and they decided that their youth were probably falling by the wayside. There were a lot of clubs, car clubs, and probably a need for a social place, a gathering place that was safe. We were still kind of timid to go out into the world. And so anyway, the community center still stands today, we'll be having its sixtieth anniversary this year. And currently, people from the camps, the trailer camps, come and they enjoy their retirement. They play mahjong and hanafuda, and bridge, they do tai chi, they do line dancing, they love ping pong. So shin Issei, the new Issei who have no camp background, have gone from one table to maybe, I don't know, there are so many tables, ping pong tables, and they really enjoy the center. So it has evolved from being built from the farmers, they donated the first $150,000. This is blood money, they worked really hard. And so that's our main building, so today, the shin Issei come and they don't have a real connection to the camp. We have Hawaiians, we have people who are not Japanese, and most of the grandchildren are half and half. My grandchildren are half black and half Mexican, so I needed one more son so I could have one more color, but that's okay. But my daughter-in-laws are wonderful mothers, they're really raising the kids beautifully, education is still important in our family. So just to give it juxtaposition, all these ping pong tables, and then the cases for my exhibit are side by side, and the community center has been kind enough to house both of us and their storage area because I have to have a place for it, it's too big, thirty-six panels.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.