<Begin Segment 9>

BN: Which high school did you go to?

HT: I think George Washington. Yeah, I went to George Washington. And then afterwards, when I got a job and everything, and a place where I worked for, they had a college thing, so I got my college degree, too, after that, University of San Francisco.

BN: Was your family supportive of that?

HT: Yeah. And then when I graduated, all my kids came, and they already graduated from college.

BN: Oh, this is later.

HT: Yeah, later. Oh, yeah, later, years and years later.

BN: In terms of where you lived growing up in Japantown, can you tell me a little more about other things about it? You know, going to the movies or restaurants or Bon dance?

HT: Yeah, we used to go see... because the Bukkyokai was up there, we used to go for Bon odori, too.

BN: Even though you're Konkokyo?

HT: Yeah, yeah. And then there was a restaurant, I guess it's a Chinese restaurant, on Post Street, a small one. I remember once in a while we would go eat, and that was like a really, bargain.

BN: Is it one of those restaurants that serves the Japanese-style Chinese food that Nisei eat?

HT: Yeah, it was on Post Street between Buchanan and Laguna. But yeah, if we could eat, we never...

BN: Did you go to Japanese movies and so forth?

HT: We used to go, there was, what is right now, Kokoro, what is Kokoro right now, there used to be a shrine. And they used to have programs there, Japanese, and they used to have stuff there. And I don't know, now it's Kokoro right now. But they had things like that.

BN: But then growing up, did you do any of the things like Japanese dance or any of that kind of cultural stuff?

HT: Not me, we played basketball.

BN: Right, which is kind of a cultural thing, too. What position did you play?

HT: I played any position.

BN: Were your parents involved in things like kenjinkai or that kind of thing?

HT: No, but my father, when he was doing, he did sumo, I think. Way back when, in the L.A. area, they had one of these big pictures, and I think there was a picture of my dad in there. That's when, once I went there to... but my father was really, because he was so close to Fukuda-sensei, he was always there helping. When there was something wrong with one of the apartments or the houses, my father and Fukuda-sensei would go there and fix it and everything. My father was very handy with stuff like that, so he was really good about that.

BN: Now, when you were in high school and so on, did you have an idea of what you wanted to do?

HT: No. I know that when I was going to high school and I always worked, I always had a job. I had a job in the marina, and I would go there five days a week. This guy, I would serve food and wash dishes and everything else, but the guy was really mean. And one time I said, they started charging us bus fare, and I said to the owner, "You have to pay me if I have to take the bus and come here all the time." And he goes, "Okay, you don't have to, you could quit." I said, "Okay, I'm quitting, I'm not coming back, so I'm going. And so I started leaving, then the wife comes over. "I'm going to pay you, don't tell him, it's a secret," and she would pay me. And then another time I was working up at, you know, at the George Washington house there, there's nice areas there, and I went to work there, live-in kind of stuff, and they said, okay, they're going to pay me that month, and the lady says she's going to pay me. And she goes, "Here's the money," and I said, "No, you said to my mother this is how much you're going to pay me per month." And she goes, "Oh, no, your mother does not understand English, so she doesn't know." "My mother was born in San Francisco, she's American, and we're quitting," and we all walked out, I walked out. Because people are like that.

[Interruption]

BN: And then when you were working these jobs, was that for your money, or did you contribute it to...

HT: My kozukai for me? My mother and father, because my father didn't make any money, so we had to, everything we did, we took care of everything. My oldest sister, too, she lived-in and did things, I did that, my younger sister Nancy, my youngest sister Janie, we all worked every single...

BN: To kind of support yourself from a young age.

HT: You're lucky, you do that. It was a tough time, but then it makes you stronger. So that's how we grew up.

BN: So growing up in Japantown, did you, were most or all of your friends also Japanese, or did you have friends who were white or other races?

HT: I had mostly Japanese, but then I went to Marina, and then the kids there were a lot of black kids, I used to play basketball with them, because they came from Japantown, and they sort of made... because there was a couple of black girls that I knew that lived on Fillmore. And then when they go to junior high school, they sort of know who you are, and you say, "I'm going to play basketball with you." I used to play with black kids growing up there. But they accept you because you're local.

BN: Well, then you must have been pretty good.

HT: No, it's just that you grow up like that. So if they make friends with you, I knew one of the girls' brother, and so it was good. I got along more with black than whites, because the white people are richer, you know what I mean? Growing up. Because I used to walk through Marina every day to go to school. It's something that... but then all my sisters, they all worked, all of us.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.