<Begin Segment 3>

[Inside building]

SH: As we come inside, you can take a look. I can point out that the stage area was not part of the original building. It was probably put together some years later, I would say, maybe in the early '30s. They began having entertainment, and they kind of needed a stage to use as a performance area. And so they kind of created this out of, probably had some of the leftover materials because it blends in very well, and it doesn't really... actually, it just looks like it was part of the building from the original. As you kind of look around the entire building here, you can see all the wood lathing, everything's still in pretty good shape. The oil on the floor has since probably worn away, but that can easily be polished and brought back to life, and I think it'd still be good for quite some time again. Again, the building was probably in the beginning all one room, and as the need arose for separating maybe classes or age groups or whatever, then these accordion style doors were placed here. When we'd have dinners and whatnot, sometimes we'd close it off, the kids would stay on one side and the adults would stay on the other side. Kids would have their games going, the adults would be playing bingo or whatever. So it became very multi-purpose. Fluorescent lights were probably added much later. I recall the old globe type bulbs were in the ceiling, and so I would say the neons were probably brought in in probably the '90s sometime.

You can kind of still see our New Year's song sheet. It's tradition that we sing the New Year's song, and so as we celebrated New Year's here throughout the years, then we just sing along with the words. The chalkboard here was an original, it was probably here since the early days. What you see on the writing there is probably from the Doshi Kai club, probably names for some reason, probably a bus trip to Reno or something, and it was just kind of left there. I would say it's probably written in around the mid-'90s, because I recognize a lot of the names, and probably three-quarters of them have since passed.

The piano, as Donna was asking, probably has its own history and I'm not quite sure of that history. But like you said, Tom was talking about that, so you'll have to reference him. [Laughs] But as far as myself, I remember our sensei was a pianist, and she was able to play a lot of tunes and do our sing-alongs with her accompanying us on the piano.

We had a question about these large picnic-type tables. These actually came out of my father-in-law's labor camp. He had dismantled his camp as far as the labor eating portion of it probably in the early '90s, we needed a place to get rid of these great tables, and the club kind of saw a need for large tables for these, so they kind of ended up here. Lot of these other circular tables and whatnot were the creation of our neighbor and caretaker Harry Makino. Harry was a relative of Tom Sakata, actually, he was uncle to Tom Sakata and the Sakata family. And Harry was pretty much a jack of all trades. He was able to fix anything, put anything together, for instance, our heater here was actually made from two oil drums, fifty-five gallon drums. And he and I got the idea to kind of do that, put that together, probably in the early '90s, and it ended up working out very well. They put out quite a bit of heat for us.

[Interruption]

SH: Because we're kind of blessed with a pretty good sized lot here, we were able to do, as far as from a kid's perspective, a lot of games outside. And I remember when I was going to Japanese school here, we'd always have recess, and we'd play baseball. And we had a large enough area here that we can pretty much have a good time doing that. I recall in the past, when they used to have sumo wrestling, that was a really big deal here. And actually, at that time, they had enough canvas to pretty much cover the entire lot, because sumo was always done on a clean cloth surface. And the prizes during that time was probably rice, sacks of rice, and bottles of sake. And so everybody that was a sumo or had somebody in their family who was capable of being a participant, just was really pushed into that, because all the family wanted rice and all the family wanted sake. [Laughs]

Here's an interesting relic here. Baseball catcher's shins, shin guards. Actually, we had several teams that were sponsored by the school here. And they probably practiced here, although it was very difficult for a full sized baseball game, but other than that, they still were sponsored by the community based out of here, and they did very well. Some of the trophies are still around someplace here.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2012 Densho and Preserving California's Japantowns. All Rights Reserved.