<Begin Segment 7>

TI: During this time when you were growing up on Sacramento Street, what kind of work did your father or the family do to support himself?

RK: My dad basically was a handyman type. And then he went to work as a night clerk in a hotel on Powell Street. My mom was like a caregiver to an elderly couple. So we come back, and then that's how we got into, or my mom and dad got into managing a hotel. We bounced around school, my brother and I had to go from school to school, back to original school. Because my mom and dad were managing a hotel on Powell Street, so we had to go to a school that was in the area. And then I think I was in the third grade, second grade, something like that, we moved back to the house so I went back to the original school.

TI: Oh, so for a period when they started managing hotels, you lived in the hotel, and so that's why you went to school.

RK: Yeah.

TI: So let's talk about that. So what was it like living... and so the location, you say, Powell Street, is this like the Tenderloin district?

RK: No. It was right above Chinatown where the hotel was. You could walk two blocks and you were right in the middle of Chinatown.

TI: And so this was the first hotel that they managed?

RK: Right.

TI: And you lived here for a while?

RK: We were there for, I don't know, four years, three years, something like that. And then we went back to Sacramento Street, so I went back to the original school.

TI: But let's go back to the house, the hotel. About how old were you when... you said three or four years, what kind of grades or age were you?

RK: I think I was in the second grade. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was the second grade.

TI: And so the family, talk about how the family lived in the hotel? Was it like you had this one shared room or multiple rooms?

RK: The first hotel, it was, my brother and I slept on one bed and then my mom and dad were in another... actually they had a bedroom right across the hall.

TI: And then was it one of those types where you had the rooms, and then there was a shared bathroom down the hallway, or did you have your own bathroom?

RK: We had our own bathroom. And then we went back to Sacramento Street, actually, we all went, my brother and I almost burned the hotel down.

TI: Tell me about that. How did you almost...

RK: Well, it was around the Fourth of July, and we got some sparklers. So I used to have fun. I lit one of 'em up and I was swinging it back and forth and we lit the curtain on fire.

TI: And this was in your room?

RK: Yeah. My brother and I were going back and forth to the bathroom with cups filling with water and so on.

TI: Because it was actually on fire? It was burning?

RK: Yeah. So somebody on the street happened to see us, so they called the fire department.

TI: Oh, so the fire trucks came?

RK: Yeah.

TI: And so what happened? Did you guys get in trouble?

RK: Oh, yeah, we got in trouble.

TI: [Laughs] And what did that look like? Who was the disciplinarian in your family?

RK: My dad.

TI: And when you say you got in trouble, what did that mean? Did he just sort of yell at you or what types of things happened?

RK: Yeah, he yelled a lot. My mom always had to tell him it's okay, it's okay, they're just young kids playing around.

TI: And when you think about fire trucks coming, did they just kind of come in and put it out, or did they have to break windows or anything like that? How major...

RK: Well, no, they came into the room with the extinguishers. They didn't have to use any hoses or anything.

TI: Okay, so it wasn't really, it wasn't at that point spreading or anything.

RK: No. Somebody actually happened to see us, happened to see what we were doing up in the bedroom.

TI: Well, you guys were lucky because probably those little cups weren't going to...

RK: Oh, yeah.

TI: That's a good story.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2024 Densho. All Rights Reserved.