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PW: And tell me a little bit about your mother then, too. What was her name?

YW: My mother was, her name was Tanabe, her maiden name was Tanabe, and she was from Yokohama. But she was sick and weak ever since I could remember, ever since I was a child. And I can only remember maybe seeing her walking around maybe about two or three times in her lifetime, and the rest of the time she was in bed, she was sick. And she had a very weak heart, and she died when she was only thirty-nine years old. I was fourteen, and so I was raised kind of by myself. I knew at that time that I would have to do something to make my own living. I wanted to do something more than working in a laundry plant. So I went to beauty school and got my certificate to practice. I opened up the shop when I was twenty-one, twenty-two years old. I had a beauty shop in Oakland Chinatown, and that was a good place for me because about the time (...), there was rumors of a war starting, and the government was building ships. The shipyards were right in our backyard, in Alameda, Oakland, Berkeley, Richmond. And people were coming from all over the country, they wanted to work in the shipyards. It was a government job, a good job. If you didn't know how to build ships, they trained you, even the women. And that's where they got the name Rosie the Riveter. They did everything the men did, they were working right alongside the men. And there was always this friendly rivalry. The women were (...) working with the men, they always had these banners that said they wanted equal pay for equal work, but that never changed very much for a long time. But because they were still women, and women being women, they still wanted to look good. But the shipyards were open day and night and some of the women had to work these awful odd hours. They couldn't find beauty shops to get their hair done, so they finally (came to) Chinatown, and so I catered to them. And so our hours were long. But it was a good place for me, like I say, because the restaurants also in Chinatown were open late, and I think they were catering to these people that worked the shipyards, that worked the canneries that were supplying everything to the servicemen. And the hours were long, they worked so late that they couldn't (find) someplace where they could get their hair done.

PW: Were they mixed race? Were they many different types?

YW: Well, I must say that I think that in the beginning, it seemed to me that they would only hire white women in the beginning. I think they realized later that it was some of the minorities that were really good workers, and I think that was because I think they were more used to doing heavy manual kind of work, and they were very good. And so it got so they were... they hired many minorities.

PW: What was the name of your business?

YW: The beauty shop was Alice Beauty Salon.

PW: Why Alice?

YW: Well, it was the name of a person that used to own it previously. And she used to come to the beauty school, this woman was from, I think she was from Hawaii, and her husband had another business, and he needed some more help, and she wanted to help her husband, so she wanted to sell her beauty shop. And she had hired me as an operator just before that. So she got to know my work when she got ready to sell.

PW: So was she Nisei? Was she a Nisei also?

YW: She was... you know, I don't know. I'm not sure what she was. All I know is I think she was from Hawaii, because she spoke both Japanese (and English)... and she was Japanese, and she was married to a Japanese. So I don't know, I think she was a Nisei.

PW: Can you describe what the beauty shop looked like on the inside?

YW: It was small but we had all the equipment. We had... well, see, we're talking about, like, 1940, and so there were permanents, and dying a lot of hair, bleaching, everybody wanted to be a blonde. There was a lot of permanents and that kind of work, so it was a lot of work compared to what they do now, everybody had long hair. And yes, the area that I worked in, there were, the jobs were hard. There was dance halls, there was even a burlesque. And the girls were all very beautiful girls, and they kept themselves up real nice. The people that worked on the ships, because they also wanted to look nice with the long hair, they did pull up their hair, wrap their hair in bandanas, put on coveralls just like the men, and they were out there working right alongside of them doing all the work that the men did. Riveting, they got into the tanks and did everything, they were great.

PW: What were the hours? You said that you had to cater to later hours, but I'm kind of curious, like what was your day like for you to go to work?

YW: Well, because of the hours that they kept, we opened our shop probably about seven o'clock in the morning. I was there at the beauty shop 'til maybe about ten or eleven o'clock at night. There were shops that were downtown, nice shops, but the nice shops were in the department stores, and so they kept the department store hours. Like they would close at, what was it, five o'clock or six o'clock, whereas I stayed open 'til about eleven o'clock.

PW: And as the owner, tell me more about your responsibilities. Again, it's unusual that you were a Nisei woman and you ran your own business. I'm kind of curious, what were some of the things you had to take care of regularly at the shop?

YW: I did everything; I was the operator. I was the operator/owner, so we did everything. I had a partner, she used to be an operator before we went into partnership. So I learned a lot from her, but we did everything.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.