<Begin Segment 11>

TI: And when you say... let's talk about the Japanese side. When someone wanted to buy a home, when you were, this is before the war, who owned all that, all those houses and land?

LW: Oh, the front part was Alex Brown. And the back was the Dye family, Dye. They controlled, they owned all the property. So the only thing the Japanese people did was pay rent on the property. But they, Japanese people owned the house, the building, but the land wasn't owned, so you can't sell the house. You can't take the house with you.

TI: And do you know what kind of leases... so if you get the land and you actually build a house, you would want a pretty long-term lease. Because if the lease ran out, then...

LW: Well, they don't give you a long-term lease, but... well, they give you maybe ten years or so, but most of the time, once they get the lease, I think it's pretty permanent.

TI: Oh, so it would just kind of go, like, over and over, they would just renew the lease every ten years?

LW: That was the biggest problem, see. Why should you want to improve your place when you don't own the land? So that's, kind of hold up the progress. But that time, Japanese people had no choice because you can't own the land.

TI: Yeah. 'Cause you're right, I think about that, and it's hard to really invest a lot of time and effort into your house if you're just leasing, and it could be, you might have to move later on. So tell me a little bit about Alex Brown. Who was Alex Brown and...

LW: I don't really know, but he was a wealthy banker. He used to have a big bank in Walnut Grove, and he had a nice big residence across the river. Not on the this side, but on other side of the river. Then the Dye company owned the back.

TI: But the front part of the town was all Alex Brown?

LW: Yeah.

TI: And so did he originally have all those buildings built in Front Town, or was that just the land and then the Japanese built?

LW: Yeah, because... I don't recall, but I heard that way back there it was flooded, the whole Japanese town. That's the reason I think they started building two-story in case of, because it's so close to the river.

JS: Did, who owned the property that Mary's Restaurant is...

LW: We were leasing from Alex Brown.

JS: Oh, you were?

LW: Yeah. We owned the building, but not the land. So when we evacuated to the camp, we had to sell the building, not the land.

JS: Do you remember who you sold to?

LW: No, we had somebody. At the last minute, my parents didn't know whether we were gonna come back or not. This one Portuguese family bought it. We sold it for two thousand dollars. The whole thing, the house, equipment, everything.

TI: Good.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright (c) 2009 Densho and Preserving California's Japantowns. All Rights Reserved.