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DG: Okay, let's go ahead now and talk more about Salt Lake and...

TS: Well just one thing that I might mention. I used to go into see the Dean of the Law School every once in a while, just to shoot the breeze. And I can recall that he was a bald headed, tall Yankee with a very heavy (Irish) accent and he would say, "Sakahara, did you ever think that you are a minority of minorities. Because if you are not a Mormon," he says, "you're nothin.'" [Laughs] "Just like I am," he says. So that's my first exposure to this sort of thing because the Dean of the Law School was a very learned man, but he was very conscious of the fact that Salt Lake City was the center of Mormon religious activity and he was a (Catholic) minority in that sense. During the time that I was in school, I could remember many, many times I was on duty as a night clerk in the hotel where we lived and people would, men would drop in, some people I knew, some people I did not know. But most of them said they had a hard time finding a place to stay, so I told them, "Well, I got a sofa bed in the living room, you're welcome to stay." And many times Kiyo would wake up on the morning to find some stranger in (the sofa) bed. [Laughs] She'd feed them breakfast and we thought nothing of it. But I think it was one of the most fortunate things that we were able to do, because after we returned to Seattle, so many people, so many men would come into my office and say, "Remember the time that I had no place to stay in Salt Lake and I slept in your living room and had breakfast." And I had forgotten, but people just don't forget those things I guess. So it's one of the fortunate things that happened in our lifetime, to help with my law practice, I would say.

KS: Well, they slept on our studio couch because all the rooms were full. That's why he could study at night. He didn't have to check anybody in or anything like that. The housing in war times was very, very difficult, and Salt Lake more than ever, because so many people came through Salt Lake on their way to someplace else.

DG: Caucasians too?

KS: Caucasians too, but. Most of the Niseis came through there. Heart Mountain was not very far away and there was Topaz, isn't there? There was, that was in the salt flats. And then the people from Minidoka, they'd come through Salt Lake in order to... if they were going to Mississippi, you know, on the way to Camp Shelby, they had to go, or coming from Camp Shelby up to Minidoka to see their family, they...

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.