<Begin Segment 42>

JS: Can you talk about when your family returned to Walnut Grove and they lived in the Japanese schoolhouse? For how long, and then what business did your parents do at that time?

LW: Well, that bathhouse, they stayed there quite a time until... the kids all moved out, but they stayed there until they could, because they got older and somebody got to watch them, so they sold their business. Not the land, but they sold the business. Must be real cheap, but it was kind of run down, so I don't think they got too much for it.

TI: And Louie, I'm a little, I want to make sure I understand. So what business did they sell? Is this the restaurant again?

LW: Whose? Mine?

TI: No, the one you said that run, got run down.

LW: Oh. Well, whoever wants to buy it, but hardly anybody was buying it. No buyers, because they don't own the land.

TI: Right. No, so when was this? This is after the war?

LW: After the war. It's still, after the war, they still, they couldn't own the land, so...

TI: Okay, but then --

JS: So what did your parents do when they came back after the war?

LW: Well, they didn't do anything. What they did was they rented another house. They moved out of the Japanese school because so small, they rented a house right next to Maeda. And that's where they stayed there until we came to Sacramento. Because my brother and my sister was working Sacramento, so they were commuting. They were commuting from Walnut Grove, but finally, it's too much, so we rented an apartment in Sacramento, and we moved into there.

JS: So when did your father die and what happened?

LW: Well, my father died when he was forty-seven, so right after they came to here. So I didn't get to see him at all, because I was in Colorado then when I found out, so I just came for the service, that's it, and went back again. And same thing with my brother in the service, it was same thing, too, but he didn't go back to Japan, he just stayed. Then he got discharged, and he came to Sacramento to work in the grocery business.

JS: When did your mother work at the Mexican restaurant?

LW: My mother was helping out, but not, somebody that was running the restaurant, I think she was going there, helping out, like an employee. Not the owner, she was just working for somebody there.

JS: And which restaurant was that?

LW: Mary's Restaurant, but I don't know whether they changed the name or not after we left.

JS: Oh. So whoever took over that business..

LW: Yeah, whoever took over might change the name, but I don't remember. The only thing I remember was my mother's name. But pretty well-known, that Mary's Restaurant, because when the Sacramento funeral, George Klump, they used to come down for the service, they used to stay at my mother's place because that's the only place they could have coffee and, you know, 'cause they got to wait for the service at the Buddhist church. They dropped the body off, and they got one or two hour's break, so they used to come to my mother's place and kind of socialize. So my mother get to know 'em real good. So when my mother died, that Klump company, they didn't charge us a penny for the service or whatever you have to pay. I was surprised.

TI: And when did your mother die?

LW: '60... something... she was about seventy-something years old.

JS: So she moved in with one of the kids in Sacramento?

LW: She moved in with my brother, older brother, because he wasn't married, single. James was married, so he had another place. And by then, he had three kids, so I was staying with my brother for a while, just enough to sleep. That's the time I came back and I, Sacramento, started working at the signal depot, but I didn't like that job. So I lasted for about six months, then I moved around, then I went to the grocery business, and that's where I ended up. But the grocery business, I worked for Stop'n'Shop first when I started, that's a chain store. Then I went to work for the independent, the Japanese owner, on Sixteenth and Broadway, over here where the Tower Records is. That was the grocery store there. Now, it's not, but that time there was Safeway store, and we were the Japanese store there. I worked there twenty years, then the land, the owner sold the property, so we had to, they raised the rent, so we had to move it out. Then I went to work for Corti Bros. there for ten years, then kind of semi-retired, then I went to work for this North American Japanese Foods for another part-time, ten years.

<End Segment 42> - Copyright (c) 2009 Densho and Preserving California's Japantowns. All Rights Reserved.