Densho Digital Repository - Shiz Inaba Interview

Densho Digital Repository
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Shiz Inaba Interview
Narrator: Shiz Inaba
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Wapato, Washington
Date: May 27, 2023
Densho ID: ddr-densho-1000-538-12

<Begin Segment 12>

TI: So you were telling me earlier that your parents, when they left Minidoka, they returned to Portland. Not Milwaukie, they went to Portland.

SI: No, because we didn't have any money to go farm.

TI: So they had to give up farming because everything...

SI: Oh, yeah, we had to. And so when we went back, the only thing they went out looking for what they could do, and they leased, owned a hotel that is, oh, maybe third-class, right there on Burnside. I used to always call it Skid Row. [Laughs]

TI: And I think the name of the hotel was the Riverside Hotel?

SI: Yeah, Riverside.

TI: And so who would stay at this, the Riverside Hotel?

SI: It was only a dollar a day, the rooms. So the sailors right there, when they docked, the sailors would come in, and anybody else who was looking for a place to stay.

TI: So these were people who would just like stay for a few nights or something?

SI: No, I think some of them stayed because they had a job.

TI: Okay. And they would just stay there for...

SI: Because I know my mother, she did the cleaning. So I remember these things.

TI: So very different than farming.

SI: Yeah, it is.

TI: So the two of them went to Portland, but you and your sister didn't go back to Portland, you went someplace else. Right? You went to Ontario.

SI: Oh, for school, yes.

TI: For school. So after Minidoka, you and your twin sister, Mieko, where did you go?

SI: We must have been working at Payette, Idaho, with my auntie, Auntie Sasaki. And then we stayed there and went to Ontario High School for the next year. And I think we stayed there only one year and then we came back to Portland. And then I had my senior year at Lincoln High School, and I graduated.

TI: Okay. Now was that hard? Because you started high school at Hunt High, Minidoka, then you went to high school in eastern Oregon for a year, then you went to Portland. High school's a time when usually you make good friends.

SI: Yeah. It's kind of hard because you got different friends and you had to have new friends all the time.

TI: Now, so are you close to any of your high school friends, either from Hunt High or Ontario or Portland?

SI: No, just the ones in Portland. We got to know people in Portland.

TI: Because you then stayed there for a while.

SI: Yeah.