<Begin Segment 22>

DG: So this Board that owned the building, do you know how they started it or who some of the people were that began the Students' Club?

TS: As we understood it, people, students from Japan had a hard time getting housing. Also, Japanese ancestry students from all of Seattle used to have a hard time because there was a discriminatory policy of all the fraternities for housing. The Isseis went around the entire state to solicit donations to buy property to be used for housing for the Japanese students.

DG: This is the Board of this University Students' Club? Do you think the original Board were students themselves or businessmen in the community?

TS: No, the original Board always was a combination of alumni and student officers. The original alumni members were the ones that were asked by the, or they may have been the organizers of the financial campaign but anyway the money came into the Board...

DG: Did they have a mortgage in your day, or was it paid for already?

TS: It was paid for, but because we had to fix the roof and do various capital repairs, we did have about, at about the time we sold the property we had a balance of about $3,000 or $4,000. The reason why that clubhouse was sold is because we couldn't get anybody to stay, because by the time after the war, the students came back, the fraternities and other houses opened up housing to students so there was no (housing) problem.

DG: When was it sold?

TS: In the '50s I think.

DG: Oh, that early?

TS: We sold it for about $55,000, paid about $3,000-4,000 balance on the mortgage and now it's used exclusively for scholarships. The University Students' Club Board has done a tremendous job over the years. They've given out pretty close to $200,000 in scholarships and their net assets are about $200,000.

DG: Who were some of the people that were associated with that and that you remember? You were there in '30, starting around '35, right? So probably the original people were around.

TS: I think so because I remember the alumni members of the University Students' Club were people like Tom Masuda, who was one of the first lawyers in Seattle, Bill Minbu, Juro Yoshioka, Yoshito Fujii, and a couple of others.

DG: They were the early businessmen and professional people?

TS: So the students themselves had representation on the Board of the University Students' Club and the alumni, of course, they were the same people all the time. The student members of course changed because of change in officers.

[Interruption]

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.