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BN: Do you have memories of what Little Tokyo was like growing up in the '40s and the '50s, because you're outside, you're still pretty close.

AK: Yeah. I mean, we would probably be in Little Tokyo three, four times a week at least. I mean, if not on Sunday, and then you hang out afterwards, you go to the barber there, you'd eat there three, four evenings. My dad would be in clubs or different groups like that, so whether it's church related or temple related, there would be some kind of activity or whatever, and my mom was active. So, I mean, it was a safe place, safer place, you remember the Texaco gas station, the doctor, you'd go to the doctor. Although many of the doctors I had were Caucasian doctors, so you'd be someplace else on Wilshire Boulevard, but there would always be the Japanese or the Japanese end. So Little Tokyo was just a regular ongoing routine. If you're down at Maryknoll, after service or whatever, you might go eat out there, or you might go shopping down there. In those days, a lot of the Japanese foods, they didn't have in the regular grocery, so the only grocery store you could go would be a Japanese one like in Little Tokyo. So Iida Market or some of these other places, they catered to the Japanese. I guess I was more Americanized so I wouldn't have to buy Japanese stuff at the Japanese stores in terms of clothing and costumes of one type or another. But there were those things that were available, the gift stores and so forth.

BN: Did your family have like a favorite restaurant where she always would go?

AK: The famous one in Little Tokyo is Far East, that was Chinese-run, Chinese family. We knew across the street, Lem's Cafe, because we knew Betty Lem and the family. So my mom knew that family because they lived near Silver Lake, too. And so we'd go there and eat maybe once a week, once every other week or something. And then for the banquets there would be San Kow Low or some of these upstairs big rooms kind of thing. And one of the mothers, or one of the women was married to, she was Japanese, would be married to the Chinese guy who owned the place. So that was a mixed thing, and that one, you couldn't get things that Anzen Hardware has, because Maehara-san would have these different instruments that you can only get in Japan, he would be importing these things. Or you'd see a mousetrap, it'd be a Japanese mousetrap. So there are things like that, or flowers and flower arrangements and things like that, the ikebana groups. The Sun building and some of these other places had some of the cultural teachers or you would go there. There was, on Weller Street over here, there was a restaurant, but it was catering American food, but they would have, like, shumai and things like that on occasions. So you would have these shumai specials and things that everybody would go to on Friday, because everybody knew that Friday was shumai special day. So you have a hard time trying to get in. So food was the thing. But after the war, like on Second Street and so forth, there were a lot of SROs. And during World War II, this became a black area, so there were still single blacks and some of these other guys living around here. So you'd sort of avoid certain hotels or certain areas, some of which because you didn't have anything in common, more than anything else. So I think that was sort of a dividing thing. But I'd go down First Street or Second Street or Third Street and you'd see some of the places. Little Tokyo at the time wasn't that large, the commercial area and so forth. It was a place to go.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.