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SY: And this place that you stayed, can you describe what that was?

KS: It's right down, it's right down here, Toyo Hotel.

SY: Still there?

KS: It's where the police department --

SY: It's still there?

KS: No, the police department is there now, but that whole block used to have Toyo Hotel and they had a market downstairs, they had another, I don't remember whether it was another hotel towards the corner, towards San Pedro, then there was another little store, building there. That whole block was a lot of little buildings. And I think the, near Spring Street side of the block is, seems to me it was like a little, what do you call, industrial building. It was not a hotel, but it was some kind of industrial, like a warehouse type building. That whole section was completely wiped out and the police department was placed there.

SY: So the Toyo Hotel was one of a few hotels.

KS: One of several places.

SY: And mostly Japanese Americans lived in these hotels?

KS: Yeah, lot of the Japanese that came off that area, came back to that area, they had owned the hotels, they had owned markets and all that stuff, which was given to the blacks to take over, all that sort of thing.

SY: During the war.

KS: During the war. And I understood that one of the families that had a hotel down there are the people that we got to know each other later, later in life. And he, from the Toyo Hotel situation is when all this other events took place, but going from there, from the Toyo Hotel, coming across Amelia, I mean Alameda to about three blocks this side, right about in this area is where the grammar school was, and we had, walked that distance from Toyo Hotel to that school until I graduated that school. Course, they moved us up, they moved me up because my school records were constantly lost with all the moving I had, so I was behind maybe one or two years. So they kept moving me up and then after I graduated there and I went to Lafayette, Lafayette Junior High School, they moved me up a couple of grades there from ninth grade to tenth grade, and then they skipped and I graduated from there to Roosevelt High School.

SY: So you really didn't know exactly how old...

KS: No, I didn't. I mean, it was not a conscious thing even when I was growing up. Birthday was unknown, age was unknown, and we never had a birthday. In fact, it wasn't until... well, somebody did tell us, parents or somebody told us, "This is your birthday." But it was several years later, after I went to high school, 'cause I needed a birth certificate and that's when I got and I looked at it, says, "Oh, that's when I was born." And then my mother tells me about this date of the birthday. It was about an hour or two, he asked, begged the doctor to move it to the 29th. And I said, "Why?" She says, "Tennoheika was born on 29th." [Laughs]

SY: So getting back to, 'cause I think it's fascinating that you all grew up in this hotel, the five of you lived in, in this. Do you, can you kind of describe what that?

KS: Yeah, that was...

SY: How many families lived here?

KS: Well, there was two floors, and --

SY: Just two floors.

KS: -- and I think each hotel room occupied a family.

SY: It must've been a fairly good size room.

KS: They're not any much bigger than the normal hotel rooms of today. I mean, they were reasonable bigger than the, where you just have a bed and a quarters. There a little bit more room in there and you could probably barely squeeze two beds and a cot in there, that kind of situation.

SY: And no kitchen. Or was there a kitchenette?

KS: No kitchen, no kitchenette. I mean, it had a little bench there with some kind of -- I don't know whether we did any cooking. Yeah, he did, he must've done some cooking there. Yes, I remember him doing some cooking there 'cause we took, we got the water from the central sink, bathroom sink and all that sort of thing. Wash the dishes in there and all that. So it was a central cleaning situation, and you brought your rice pot and whatever they were using to cook to the room and do it on little stoves.

SY: So that, but at the time did you think, "Well, this is kind of tough"?

KS: No. I never had any comparisons, so we never had a comparison saying that this is tough, this is --

SY: Was it smaller than the barracks room, though? Was it...

KS: It's about the same size.

SY: About the same size, so you're used to it.

KS: We were used to it already. We were already in tight quarters in there, with five, except we had a little bit older kids at this point.

SY: Right.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.