<Begin Segment 28>

MU: You had to run a regular hotel there, huh?

HW: Well, yeah, it was interesting. I had to work like sixteen, eighteen hours a day. But, it was interesting. The first thing that happened after we were set in there for about, oh, a few weeks was, a guy came knocking on the door -- he couldn't come in but he asked to come in and I talked to him. He was a manager of a band. He said, "We would like to come two nights a week and play dinner music for you." This was not an Oriental band -- it was an Occidental band, you know.

MU: Occidental band?

HW: Yeah. And he spoke good English. And I found out that he, he was Japanese, but he had been in, studying business in United States seven years so he spoke English as good as any Nisei did. And then he brought over the bandleader and he spoke excellent English.

MU: Yeah?

HW: Well, he's a graduate of... what's the music school that Alonzo Stagg coached at?

GO: U of P?

MU: UO -- University of Pacific. They used to call it, College of the Pacific.

HW: College of the Pacific. Okay.

GO: Oh, I see.

HW: He was a graduate of College of the Pacific in music and he couldn't get work in the United States so he was in Japan.

GO: Sat Murayama?

HW: I forget his name.

GO: Trumpet player.

HW: Anyway, anyway, they were the band that played for Tokyo Rose.

MU: Uh-huh.

HW: So, you know, many quiet times of talking about this and that with them. They took me on a tour of Yokohama and Kamakura, and places like that.

MU: Uh-huh. Did you get a chance to meet Tokyo Rose by any chance?

HW: No, I didn't. They were trying to round her up. But I was -- we had also 250 war correspondents staying there, see, so they kinda kept me up-to-date what was going on.

MU: Well, your residents there must have been pretty happy with the band.

HW: Yeah. They were really excited. It was good. Then, a little guy, 'bout that tall [gestures, indicating height], he had on clothes that looked like khakis -- he wanted to see me. I said, "Well, come on over and sit down. We're at dinnertime so have dinner with me and we'll talk. What you want to talk about?" Says, "We have a four-piece string quartet and we want to come and play for you two nights a week." Yeah. And I said, "What do you play?" He says, "Well, we play everything but we would like to play nothing but Stephen Foster."

MU: Oh.

HW: So I didn't tell anybody anything. They were surprised when they came into dinner. There was a quartet up on the stage, we had a little stage there. And when they broke out in Stephen Foster, played a medley of 'em, everybody just stood up and clapped. [Laughs]

MU: Really? Now, at that time, well, I suppose you could dance, if you wanted, to the music then?

HW: Well, it was dinnertime.

MU: Yeah. Oh, there was no room for dancing?

HW: No, there was no -- there were 750 staying there and probably 4- or 500 would sit down and eat at a time.

MU: Oh. And at that time, were wives there, of the officers?

HW: No, no.

MU: So they were mostly men?

HW: We had -- yeah. We had some WAC, we had fifty WAC officers staying there. They weren't of high enough rank, but they didn't want to put 'em in the regular ranks, so they put 'em in the Dai Ichi Hotel. Yeah. Fifty WAC officers.

MU: So you had two bands, then, or one...

HW: Two bands, yeah. Four nights a week?

MU: Four, four nights a week all for free?

HW: Free, yeah -- just a dinner. They didn't want anything, but I insisted, "You've gotta have dinner with us, you know, after you finish your performance."

MU: Did they stay?

HW: Oh, yeah. Yeah, they did. Yeah.

MU: It's too bad you didn't get the name because Gary here is interested in music -- Nikkei music not only here in the States, but Japan.

HW: You probably can find out fairly easy.

MU: If you do, why don't you...

HW: Yeah, he was a bandleader for...

GO: It's probably Hisashi Moriyama.

HW: It might be. Pretty big guy?

GO: Big guy.

HW: Yeah, okay. He was a big guy.

HW: And we used to, you know, go sightseeing, here and there couple of times.

MU: Well, that's great.

<End Segment 28> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.