<Begin Segment 18>

TI: When I was, I was doing some interviews in Los Angeles earlier, and in Little Tokyo, they would actually have, essentially, I would describe them as gangsters. And one of the things they would do is they would oftentimes go out to the farming communities and do gambling and prostitution and things like that. Did that ever happen in Walnut Grove, where people, like the gangsters from the big cities, would come to...

LW: No, because town itself was so close, that if you do something wrong, you hear about it, or your parents would put the foot down. They were pretty strict about that. Most of the kids pretty, mind their parents pretty good.

TI: But would the, but would the gangsters from the big cities ever try to come to Walnut Grove or the surrounding farming communities?

LW: Never heard anything like that. No crime at all. They hardly carry a gun. Only thing they had was shotgun for hunting, you know, pheasant hunting, duck hunting. But crime itself... but prostitution started after the camp. After they came back, they used to have a lot of those.

TI: In the Walnut Grove area?

LW: Yeah.

TI: And that would be in the Japantown area or the other parts?

LW: Well, like where we had dinner, Locke, across the street and upstairs, there used to be a prostitution place. And kids from Walnut Grove used to walk from there. It's not too far. Then Isleton, the base store, remember the base store there? Then next door was a prostitution place. And Lodi had one.

TI: And was that part of the proximity to the river? I mean, there was that river traffic and people would...

LW: No, this is all Asian. [Laughs] Because whites, if you fool around with the wife, they'd get arrested, you know. Asian, they don't bother you. Because, what it is is because Asian, the wife doesn't complain like the white wife, right? As long as the sheriff's department, if they don't have any complaints, they're not going to bother you. It's just like the Chinatown.

TI: And so this was for, like, a lot of the farmers, too, they would come in.

LW: Right, yeah.

TI: And this was, I guess, just kind of known and accepted in the community? So the women didn't get upset, they just...

LW: Well, especially the Filipino nationality, they're all single, see, not married. So most of the businesses, they're the ones that spent all the money. You can't beat the white girls. [Laughs]

JS: So was the Filipino, like, laborers would come in...

LW: People that live in the camp, on the farm, not in town. But now, there's quite a few Filipino family came in and they're raising the kids. But before, there's no Filipino people in the family, only Japanese and Chinese. But they're all out in the farm there.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright (c) 2009 Densho and Preserving California's Japantowns. All Rights Reserved.