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TI: And so from there, when you were living at the Powell, what was your typical day? Did you have to do chores before school or anything like that?

RK: I remember I always had to kind of clean up in the back. They had a little storage room, and my job was to sweep the place out. I don't remember what my brother did.

TI: At this Powell Street hotel, who was the clientele? Who were, essentially, your neighbors?

RK: Most of the people that were in that hotel were retired. Sold their home and did whatever, and they moved into the hotel. There was one lady that she was like a night clerk, so she actually worked for my mom and dad.

TI: And you mentioned earlier, in terms of your parents got into this, and I think it was right after you mentioned the work they did, you mentioned your mom was like a caregiver and your dad was a night clerk. It sounds like by focusing on retired, did your mom also help the people that were retired with her kind of care service? Did she do any of that?

RK: Well, she actually found out from one of the family friends. The wife happened to be doing the same thing, but she had so many clients that she just couldn't handle everybody, so she asked my mom if she'd be willing to pick up some of the clients.

TI: Now, for you and your brother, here you had your room with your own bathroom. After the Sacramento Street, it sounds like you had more room to live in?

RK: At the hotel? Yeah, we did.

TI: Did you like that better than Sacramento Street?

RK: In the sense that we didn't have to share a bathroom with another family, yeah. It was a lot better.

TI: Then how about friends in school? Was that hard to move or was it the same, or how was that?

RK: To me, school was school. You just had to get to know the other students. Most of them were all Chinese because it was close to Chinatown.

TI: So that must have been a shift for you, because on Sacramento Street, you described your neighbors as mostly white, and now you're going to a school that's mostly Chinese.

RK: Right.

TI: That's a pretty big difference.

RK: After a while you get used to it. I mean, I was glad to go back to my first school after we moved back to the house, because I lost a lot of friends.

TI: But then I remember now something you told me earlier. So when you first started school, back at Sacramento Street in kindergarten, how was that to start school? You were the oldest and you're starting school. What was that like for you?

RK: It was hard because at home, I always spoke Japanese. And then you go to school, you had to learn English. So that's why the teacher told my mom, "No more speaking Japanese at home, you have to speak English." And then now I forgot all my Japanese, can't remember it, couldn't remember any of it.

TI: I've heard this story, but it's generally with older Niseis before the war, but then postwar, not as much, so this is interesting that you had that same experience where growing up, you just had Japanese, and then you had to essentially learn English when you were in school. I'm guessing it might have been a little easier for Richard, your younger brother, because he probably knew he had to learn English and you maybe taught him English. So it's probably hardest on you.

RK: Yeah, it was.

TI: Now, how quickly were you able to learn English? Do you have any stories about the difficulties of not knowing English in this first year or so?

RK: Well, it wasn't that bad, because my mom spoke both Japanese and English. My dad's English was so-so. So he would kind of talk to us in pidgin, if you will. But my mom, her English was, she was born in California, so she spoke real good English, she went to school.

TI: Okay.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2024 Densho. All Rights Reserved.