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VY: Actually, let's talk about the house. And when you returned, when your family returned to Seattle after leaving Minidoka, what was waiting for your family? Was the hotel still...

KI: Okay. The hotel was held by a management company that was honest with that because they kept the hotel, ran the hotel, and whatever profits were made, they would send it to my parents, so my parents had a source of income if they wanted. And through that income, they purchased this house. Now, at the time, I think they paid cash for it, but at the time, the house, in 1945, probably must have been worth maybe, I don't know, ten thousand dollars. And at that time, houses typically were under five. So this was a big house. And Beacon Hill was a changing area where there used to be a lot of big houses, but then it was transformed into, if you will, a working class neighborhood, but we had this big house. I remember my cousin, Mr. Suzuki, his family lived in apartments, and we lived in a house. So that was one of the signs that we were comfortable. And we were able to afford it because of the profits made during the war. We weren't one of the ones who really lost out.

VY: Do you know how your parents arranged the... so this management company took care of the hotel while you were in camp, they must have had to arrange all that pretty quickly.

KI: Well, there was, I guess, a management camp, I mean, company that took over the hotel and managed it for them. And they must have charged a management fee, but there was this little profit which they used to buy the house.

VY: And where on Beacon Hill was the house? What street was that on?

KI: Hmm?

VY: In Beacon Hill, what street was the house on?

KI: Thirteenth. And it was right near the Marine Hospital.

VY: Okay. Is it still there?

KI: It's still there.

VY: Is it still in your family?

KI: No.

VY: Okay, so you came back, you had a house waiting for you.

KI: Yes.

VY: And then do you remember when you and your brother were growing up, did you ever work in the hotel?

KI: Sometimes.

VY: What kinds of things did you do?

KI: Yeah, not often, but we would go to the hotel and help out. I remember helping my father hang paper, wallpaper. And my mother would clean the beds and vacuum dust. You know, if someone asked me what my father was, I said he was a janitor. We actually owned the hotel, but we didn't hire a lot of people, we did it ourselves.

VY: That's so interesting. So if someone asked you what your father did for a living, you would say he was a janitor?

KI: Yeah, because he was, did the janitorial work. [Laughs]

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.