Densho Digital Repository - David Sakura Interview I (Densho ID: ddr-densho-1000-498-5)

<Begin Segment 5>

VY: What was that Japanese community like? What was... were there stores, schools, that sort of thing? What was there?

DS: You know, I was born in 1936. This was four years after my parents were married, and during that time, my father was a first mover if you will. He was the first adapter of technology, and that technology was photography as well as radio. And he learned via a correspondence course to repair radios, the old fashioned tube radios, and started a small radio repair business in the Japanese community. So the Japanese community, as I recall now, as a child, as a four-year-old, it was a wonderful place. There were over a hundred people living there, the accommodations weren't great. I'm quite certain we had outdoor toilets, we lived in a barrack like a row house with apartments for married couples. There were rooms in a boarding house for single men, but there were quite a few children in this village as well as my grandmother and all her children eventually moved to Beacon Hill and lived in the Japanese village. I have very fond memories of going with my father to the Japanese bathhouse, and it was a real Japanese bathhouse where the men, there was no running water in the men's dormitory, so they would go to the bathhouse to bathe. And I can remember sitting in a hot, hot tub, soaking with my father, with all the men. It was like being back in Japan. And the heat from the Japanese bathhouse came from the boilers of the sawmill. There was an assembly hall where sumo wrestlers would perform, or there would be dances, New Year's parties. There was even a tofu house where homemade tofu was made and distributed. And, of course, there was the Japanese store where you could buy wooden kegs of soy sauce and all the kinds of rice and condiments. So it was a wonderful place to grow up.

VY: Was it only Japanese in the village? Were there any...

DS: Well, there were only Japanese in the village because all the husbands and workers worked in the mill. But Eatonville, the community, was within walking distance. I enrolled in kindergarten and I could walk home, just a few blocks down the main street into the mill property. I would come home for lunch from kindergarten. So there was an extended Caucasian community outside the grounds of our Japanese village, and I can still remember people from Eatonville, the town, coming to have their radios fixed at my dad's little radio repair shop.

VY: So that's interesting. So people, it was kind of segregated, but people from the outer area in Eatonville would come in to the Japanese area and shop?

DS: Yeah. And I remember in 1939, Christmas, we would go shopping in downtown Eatonville. I went to kindergarten, as I say, said in 1941 through '42. And if you look at my kindergarten class picture, there were only two Asian boys, myself and my friend Tommy, in that photograph. The rest were all sort of Scandinavian looking. So the schools were integrated, my aunts, I think one of them went, or several, two of them went to Eatonville High School, fully integrated. In fact, I think one of my aunts was the valedictorian of her high school class. So the sense of discrimination, as a child, I didn't feel that at all. And I have to say that even though Eatonville today is going through a transformation and becoming a suburb of Tacoma or Puyallup, I spoke, I had the privilege of speaking in 2017 to the Eatonville High School and Eatonville community. So it was a warm welcome by the Eatonville community, and so the feeling of acceptance was really warm and welcoming, even after almost fifty years of separation.

VY: Do you remember, or do you have a sense of what the rest of Eatonville was like? Was it mostly Scandinavian type people or was there any other ethnic groups in the area? Was it mostly Asian and white?

DS: I think it's mainly Asian and white. And I don't ever recall seeing any other ethnic groups, Hispanic or black or anything. The Pacific Northwest was pretty homogeneous except for Asians.

VY: And was it the same in the mill, it was pretty much Asian and white, the workers in the mill?

DS: Yes, yes. But my father, because he could speak pidgin Japanese, he never studied formally Japanese, but he spoke pidgin Japanese to his mother and was not formally trained, but was able to speak pidgin Japanese to the non-English speaking Japanese workers at the mill, and so was promoted as sort of the straw boss, as the boss interpreter to the mill workers.

VY: Interesting.