<Begin Segment 26>

MU: Tell us a little about that Dai Ichi Hotel.

HW: Dai Ichi Hotel?

MU: Yeah.

HW: Well, it's a earthquake-proof building, built in 1939 for the 1940 Olympics. And it had four floors down and it's stabilized so that the ground around it will move, and the building would -- on rollers. And it would kinda stay stable.

MU: Oh.

HW: And, during the war, it went to seed because they couldn't maintain it. They took all the elevator cars out of it. Took all -- stripped one end of the kitchen -- there's nothing but pipes sticking out of the concrete floor, no kitchen. 735-room hotel. And we had the headquarters staff of colonels and majors in there and two generals that didn't want to go to the Imperial Hotel. They wanted to stay with their...

MU: They were residents?

HW: They wanted to reside there with the colonels, rather than to go to the Imperial Hotel.

MU: Okay. Who were your staff?

HW: My staff? I had, I was assigned about twelve guys -- GIs. And, of course, there was a Japanese hotel staff. They had to hurry up and get some people together, too.

MU: Who helped you get all those personnel, the Japanese personnel, for example?

HW: Oh, the Japanese staff.

MU: The Japanese government?

HW: Yeah, yeah. They had the, some of the board members, the hotel board members were active there and the management staff remained there -- operating staff remained there. And then we had to hire a few extra help, quite a few extra help.

MU: They were happy to get the jobs?

HW: Well, it was part of reparation. Whatever they do is gonna count towards their reparation payments later on.

MU: I mean, the people themselves, that worked there?

HW: Oh, yeah.

MU: They were happy to have that job?

HW: Yeah. Anywhere from cooks -- well we, cooks and waiters and room service, and all of that.

MU: Now, that was one of the more sturdy buildings there. Did you say that it was down four floors?

HW: Yeah, as part of the earthquake-proof and so it was cradled in a pit four floors down. And then it had a wall, concrete wall around it -- separated from the building by about that much space. I can remember being there when I felt an earthquake, and I looked out -- I didn't feel the earthquake so much as -- I was looking out the window and I could that wall outside moving. But the building wasn't moving. So I went to the head architect, who was also on the board, and he was there almost every day and I asked him about that. He says, "Oh yeah," he explained to me how it was designed and built -- seven stories high, 735 rooms.

MU: And four stories down.

HW: Four stories down, which was mostly service space and storage and things like that, yeah.

MU: Now, you say the building was stripped of all the metal pieces like radiators and boilers, and whatnot?

HW: They had a air conditioning system in it -- they didn't have radiator system. But they didn't use...

MU: Oh, that's real modern.

HW: ...they didn't use any of it during the war. They stripped all the metal out of the kitchen because they didn't use the kitchen. They stripped out the elevator cars because they needed them in military facilities. So it turns out that the people that stayed there walked up and down the stairs all the time. There was one service elevator available and, oh lots of other things. Lots of... I think we got the, we got the first elevator cars made in postwar Japan to put in there because we couldn't have the people walking up and down seven floors.

MU: I take it that was a pretty modern building at that time?

HW: It -- all the outside room had bathrooms. Inside rooms had a common furo.

MU: I was gonna ask you about the toilets, for example. Were they Western-style toilets?

HW: Western-style, yeah. Uh-huh. But the bathtubs were short. Big guys had to kinda hunch, hunch down and sit...

MU: Six-footers had a hard time?

HW: Yeah.

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.