<Begin Segment 4>

TI: And then describe the kitchen. How large was the kitchen, what kind of equipment was in the kitchen?

LW: Just regular stove, and that's it. Maybe four burner and the grill. And in the kitchen, it's everything there, like tables and dishwashing place.

TI: Now, if you were to go back in time and imagine, now I have a pretty good sense of what the layout was. But if you looked at the walls, what kind of things would be on the walls, decorations, paintings, anything like that?

LW: Really simple, nothing there. There were maybe a few pictures, that's about all.

TI: And what would the pictures be of? I mean, if you said a few pictures, what would they be? Photographs or would they be paintings?

LW: Well, no, some of those was advertising pictures. Not the no-family pictures or nothing like that, just advertising, you know.

TI: And so you have, on the main floor -- now, upstairs...

LW: Upstairs was a rooming house, yeah.

TI: So describe that. What was upstairs...

LW: Well, only thing, the upstairs, we had twelve rooms. And four rooms was taken by my family, the rest of 'em were all, mostly were all single people anyway. And they, we had (one shower only) for everybody, but no bath. And a washtub where they wash their faces and laundry, just one.

TI: And so the single rooms, and then there's like a communal bathroom?

LW: No, nothing like that. It's just one bathroom for the whole, whole eight rooms (to share).

TI: And that'd be for the family members, too?

LW: Yeah. (...) Our family went to the bathhouse next door (every night).

TI: And so I'm curious, when you have a bathroom that you have to share with the boarders, were there certain rules for the kids like when you could use it?

LW: No. It's kind of a hallway, we had two bathrooms, one on each end, and that was it. And again, it worked out good, share each other. (Our family bathroom was downstairs).

TI: Okay, so people just respected, they just kind of knew when that happened. So I'm curious in terms of when, for the business, for the boarding house, the restaurant, did the kids have chores that they had to do to help out?

LW: No, we were too little. But only thing I got called was washing dishes, that's about all. And my oldest brother, he was no help. Half of the time, he's in the pool hall. And the second one was studious, all he does is stay in the studies.

TI: So your oldest was the pool hall, the second one was the more studious one, and then you were, how would they describe you? What would they say about the...

LW: Well, when I was about maybe nine or ten...

TI: No, but if they said the older one liked to play pool --

LW: Older one was going to high school, so fourteen, fifteen years old, but no responsibility.

TI: But how would your brothers describe you? If you describe your older brother as kind of, liked to play pool, the second one was studious, what would they say about Louie? What would they say you were like?

LW: No, they didn't say too much. Somebody got to wash the dishes because we didn't have no help, and I'm the middle one. And my other, younger brother was too young to be doing all those things. My sister (was too small).

<End Segment 4> - Copyright (c) 2009 Densho and Preserving California's Japantowns. All Rights Reserved.