<Begin Segment 15>

JS: Can you describe the house?

TI: Yeah, describe the house.

JS: So this is the one near the Danish creamery, where the site is, that street.

SK: Let's see. We had a four-bedroom home, and I'm sure... well, the family next door had two bedroom, and the one next door to him was two, and then the corner house, which was, one of my childhood friends' home, I don't know how many they had. They must have had three bedroom. But anyway, we all lived in a large home.

JS: Did your aunt live with you, too, or it was just your family?

SK: No, my aunt lived with me.

JS: Okay. So did you have your own room or you shared with your brother?

SK: I think we shared.

JS: Can we go back to, remember when I came to your house and we were looking at the big photo of the 25th anniversary of Aki? Can you tell us about that?

SK: Well, I was gonna look at some of the pictures before I came, but I couldn't see. [Laughs] But actually, that picture was the 25th anniversary of the start of the store.

JS: Aki store.

SK: So that must have been about 1935. So I'm just gonna say 1910 was the day they had a store here, and twenty-five years later, so I guess that must have been about 1935.

JS: Uh-huh. And so it looked like you had a picnic at the Italian ballpark?

SK: Uh-huh.

JS: And how many people were there? It's a large photo.

SK: Oh, it must have been the whole city.

JS: So it wasn't just the workers, you just invited lots of friends and neighbors?

SK: All the customers.

JS: All the customers?

SK: That's why I wanted to look at it before I came over here, to see if I could recognize... I know who they are. I know just about everybody in town, anyway.

JS: Uh-huh. It's just a big, big store and a big celebration.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2010 Densho and Preserving California's Japantowns. All Rights Reserved.