<Begin Segment 3>

SY: And at the time when you were going to grammar school, what was your father doing?

YY: He had a drugstore on First Street. It was 525 East First Street, I remember that. [Laughs]

SY: So it was sort of on the outskirts of Little Tokyo.

YY: It was right across the street from Rose Street. You know where Rose Street is? No? It's one block east of Alameda.

SY: So were there other shops around?

YY: Yeah, there were shops around. There was one big, I think it was called California Hardware, was a big building that took the whole block from Alameda to Rose Street, right across the street from us. I remember that.

SY: And your father, do you think he leased this property to have his drugstore?

YY: Yeah.

SY: Do you remember what the drugstore was like? Was it small?

YY: It was big enough to have a soda fountain, I remember. It was pretty good size, I think, for a one man store.

SY: He had, do you, did your mother help him, help out in the store?

YY: Yeah, at times.

SY: But mostly he ran it by himself. And did he have other things, other than pharmacy, medicine?

YY: He had a, he had a liquor license, I remember.

SY: Was it, I wonder if it was difficult to get a liquor license back then.

YY: I don't know. [Laughs]

SY: So he sold liquor in the drugstore too.

YY: Yeah.

SY: And also had a soda fountain. Was it fairly busy? Do you remember?

YY: Well, as far as I can remember, it wasn't that busy.

SY: Mostly Japanese clientele?

YY: No, not really, because there was that soap company, I can't remember the name of it, White King Soap, right next to, maybe about three or four doors away. It was a parking lot and then the big manufacturing building, and there's a lot of people that used to come that were working there, on their way to work or on their way back from work.

SY: Do you remember where Little Tokyo, what the, was it sort of outside of the Little Tokyo main area? Or was it part of Little Tokyo?

YY: Well, 'cause the, most of the, from Alameda to where the parking lot to the White King Soap Company were all Japanese stores.

SY: So it probably was a part of the, 'cause Little Tokyo was bigger than it, than...

YY: It was before, yeah. Then across the street there was a Japanese store, plus a couple of hotels, Japanese hotels.

SY: So he had both Japanese clients and then the people that worked in that area come to, to... and ate at the soda fountain?

YY: Well, we only had soda and ice cream.

SY: That's nice. And did you, you were pretty young, so you probably never helped out?

YY: When I was, when I was going to high school I used to help out in the soda fountain.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.