<Begin Segment 10>

AI: Well, now tell me when the war ended, what happened? Were you in Denver at that time when the war ended?

SO: Uh-huh. Mr. Brierley was in charge of the Central City Opera House, which was revived after -- that was the first opera season after the war had started. So I was assisting him. And my dad and Michi -- Michi had come back from Chicago, and my sister, Kay, still lived in Chicago. So Michi and Daddy went to Seattle, came here, sold the property.

AI: The old grocery store?

SO: Uh-huh, and the apartment building. And decided to look for a place as they traveled south by train. And settled at the end of the run, which was Los Angeles. And Mom and I stayed in Denver. And then Daddy came back to get Mom, and she went. I came here to visit my girlfriend, Sluggy.

AI: In Seattle?

SO: In Seattle, uh-huh.

AI: So you had some time to visit?

SO: Uh-huh. Fool around a bit. And then went down to join them.

AI: Where in Los Angeles did your parents settle?

SO: They bought a hotel right down in downtown Los Angeles. And then they had a house, bought a house on the west side which was another story because they had just lifted restrictive covenant in that area through the efforts of black movie stars -- Rochester, Hattie McDaniels, and King Cole, Nat King Cole. They lived in that area called Sugar Hill. And the Fukutos and we were the first Japanese into Sugar Hill. So that, that was another whole ballgame. The Fukutos still live there.

AI: Will you tell me a little bit about that? It must have been in some ways isolating. You were in a completely new city, you were in a neighborhood that had just opened up to minorities?

SO: Well, I was going -- I was finishing up high school -- actually, Los Angeles has such a transportation problem, that you don't communicate with neighbors a whole lot. And, and then they sna -- snafued my records at Poly High, so I wound up cross-town at Belmont High School anyway. And no, you don't have time to make friends. But what I discovered was the JACL office, Sam Ishikawa was -- no, no. Tats Kushida. Who was there? We decided, whoever was there, that somebody had to take care of the social aspect of the returning Niseis. And Los Angeles was known for clubs. They had clubs of ten girls or twelve girls in the here and eight here. They had so many clubs. So we started a club service bureau, Mary Ishikawa and Teri Kuwata and I. And it became an information bureau. Where can you hold dances? Which halls will allow you? Some places won't take Japanese. How much does it cost? What activities are going on, and at what church? We just ran the Club Service Bureau for about three, four years, and also Christmas Cheer we started, to help the people who were seeking public assistance at the LA County Bureau of Public Assistance. And they were all Japanese families at that time.

AI: What was the atmosphere for Japanese families coming in? This was still right after the war wasn't it?

SO: Immediately after? It was very, very difficult to get jobs because a lot of places would not hire the Japanese, like the, I shouldn't say this, but Triple-A didn't. Many places didn't. But the gas company started, and the government, of course, the civil service. Yeah, it was pretty tough.

AI: So the club service bureau that, that you started up was really important because there were so many places that might not accept --

SO: Uh-huh. And then it was just more or less to keep some kind of communication going.

AI: Since the Japanese people were so spread out?

SO: They were scattered -- well, it's not that they were spread out in those days as much as Los Angeles is so vast. So if you say Seinan, that's west side. Now there's West Los Angeles on top of west side. It's only west side in one area. East side could include Boyle Heights and Monterey Park. But it's, it's so -- the mileage. It's so far apart. And as I say, the public transportation, which was better in those days than it is today, was sorely lacking. But we did have street cars. We did have buses then back in the '40s.

AI: And could you tell me, how did your parents make this adjustment to Los Angeles? It sounds like your father jumped right into business once again?

SO: Yeah. Well, he, he didn't run the hotel. He went to work as a dishwasher, was it? No, salad man at Lowry's, at a fashionable La Brea restaurant because he was pretty old by then. Mom never worked. So no, they had no trouble adjusting, I would say. He, he joined the Utaikai, but they didn't go to church, so and then from being a Buddhist, during Denver, I had been attending a Protestant church, and I became an Episcopalian. So I started going to Saint Mary's, but I still helped the Buddhist church with the choir in Los Angeles, too.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.