<Begin Segment 20>

DG: You told me a story about, was it a Mr. Takagi, who gave you advice.

TS: Well, while we were living in Salt Lake, we had all kinds of guests and friends of the family that looked us up and stayed with us, lived with us, some of them for several weeks or months. One of them was a Mr. Takagi, an old friend of my folks. And when I was preparing to leave Salt Lake and just mentioned it to Mr. Takagi, who was then guest of ours, I can remember one of the things that he told me was, was that, "Oh, you're going to Seattle." He says, "I've been (a long) time Seattle resident myself before, from before the war." He says, "You better watch yourself because Seattle is a very difficult community to establish yourself." In Japanese he says muzukashii, which means very difficult. And I never forgot it.

DG: Well what did he mean by muzukashii?

TS: In other words that you have to be careful what you say or what you do and had to sell yourself.

DG: And why do you have to be careful?

TS: Because people would be very critical. Quick to criticize, and...

KS: And long memories. [Laughs]

DG: Was there a political atmosphere that...

TS: Well as I understood, stand it, the Japanese Association used to have conflicts, political conflicts I their elections and he used to tell me about annual elections during which there was a white (or) shiro group and aka group, that's a red group, competing for leadership in the Japanese Association. And it was, I however, did not run into that, that sort of thing after I returned to, to the Seattle, but I, I do remember that he (talked about it).

DG: Do you know anything about the characteristics of the white group?

TS: Not, nothing except there was apparently some competitive shenanigans like you hear about unions, in competing unions in the union history.

DG: Did it have to do with businesses, or social climate or?

TS: It was a competition for leadership in the Japanese Association.

DG: Right, right. So nothing to do with gangster kind of things.

TS: No, no.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.