Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: June Takahashi Interview
Narrator: June Takahashi
Interviewers: Beth Kawahara (primary), Larry Hashima (secondary)
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: November 17, 1997
Densho ID: denshovh-tjune-01-0005

<Begin Segment 5>

BK: In terms of the community, you had mentioned that it was a small town of Scandinavians, mainly. What other minorities were there besides the Japanese?

JT: Well, there were the Scandinavians, I'd say were mostly Norwegians, in fact, it was a Norwegian's town, I guess you'd call it. And the funny thing about that is that the gentleman who founded Petersburg was Peter Bushman, that was his name, and so I guess they named it Petersburg after Peter, whatever. And in later years I came to find out that my husband, who is a maintenance/gardener, worked for Egil Bushman who was the grandson of the founder of Petersburg. And I was never able to talk to him but that's what I found out. It was just, seemed so strange to find somebody or know someone who discovered our town or settled in Petersburg. And yes, but... so basically... and then, so...

BK: So in terms of the population of Petersburg, were there a lot of Asians?

JT: There were not too many Asians, I would say, maybe, six or seven families. And two of us were pretty close together. One lived right next door to us, and he had sort of a row house which had several rooms like six or seven cabins, we called them. And they had an outdoor facility right beside, behind their house. They had a little, the regular outdoor facilities with the little hole in the seat, for the seat. And I'm sure that there's no such thing as a sewer there, it kind of just dropped. And so, and then the front of that building, Susie's father had a restaurant and rooms upstairs also. So there was a restaurant next door to us on one side and on the other side -- as all over the town of Petersburg we had several taverns -- and next door to us was a beer parlor. It was called the Mitkof Beer Parlor and this great big man ran it. He was a very gentleman. He used to give me ice cream. The funny thing about it was that they had ice cream in the beer parlor so I was able to go through the back door and get an ice cream cone occasionally and potato chips which were very rare. And so in those days I think I was -- potato chips were a real treat -- so we would have potato chips and ice cream. [Laughs]

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.