<Begin Segment 11>

MA: What was the Japanese American community like in Salt Lake City in terms of people who had been in camp versus those who hadn't? And more of the, what was the demographic like that that you remember?

AH: There were very, very, very few of us that ever came from any camp. It was mostly the Japanese families who's already been established here before the war. Some of them probably came from other communities, but by the time we got here, the families have already been established. And somebody like me, from Topaz, was very, very rare. You know, there was Ted Nagata, and my cousin, and then what was interesting to me was -- and it was really enjoyable -- is as I was growing up in Salt Lake City, you know, the Buddhist temple in Topaz was very, very active, and a lot of ministers there. And Michiko Sanada came from Reverend Sanada's family, and she's almost exactly the same age as I am. And we knew each other -- I can't say we knew each other before the war, we were too young -- but we, I think we knew each other in Topaz, and they went back to San Francisco, and then we came to Salt Lake. And then eventually the bishop of Buddhist Churches of America -- this was after the war -- transferred Reverend Sanada's family from San Francisco to Salt Lake City. So I was reunited with Michiko Sanada, and we've been very close, we still are very close. We were in each other's wedding party and things like that. It was really neat for me to be able to have a good friend from my past who had the same, similar background, and we shared a lot of things together and we became best friends.

Other than that, most of the families have already been established here. There were well-established businesses like we had a very active Japanese town for many years, there was Sunrise Fish Market, there was Sage Farm Market, there were a couple, three restaurants, Pagoda, which still exists. (Now) we don't have Japanese town anymore, we had Dawn Noodle, gone, Roy Jewelry's gone. But it was a family, there was a family grocery store owned by a Japanese family, couple of hotels. And the thing that's amazing about Japanese town -- I'm kind of rambling here -- is as popular as Nat King Cole was, you know, the African American entertainers, when they came to Salt Lake City they were real popular. They sang, like, he sang at the Rainbow Rendezvous, which is a ballroom, real popular. But none of the hotels would let them eat or sleep in the hotel or restaurants, so they ended up in our two hotels in Japanese town. And he used to come to Pagoda Restaurant to have his dinner and all that. And that's just an amazing story, isn't it?

MA: That's amazing, yeah. That is amazing.

AH: And so a lot of the owners have those fond memories and they probably have a lot of pictures of him.

MA: So how were you in general treated by the white people in Salt Lake City? How was that relationship?

AH: That's so interesting because, okay, after the war, everybody hated us.

MA: You mean all the whites?

AH: Japanese, I mean, the white people, in general. So we just completely denied our Japanese, we stopped speaking Japanese, and whenever we did anything Japanese, it was just among us. Like kimono and things like that. But we all stuck together, too, we were really a close-knit group. We had an active YBA, Young Buddhists Association, and we had a junior JACL. And then I went on, some of us went on to University of Utah, and we had an organization called Utorients, and the Japanese students there, we were all close. But yet, like at West High School, we were all close as the Japanese friends, but we were popular in the schools, but we never hung out with the popular kids, we didn't fit in the clique. But yet we were elected officers, and that's kind of strange when I think about that now.

MA: What about your parents and that generation in terms of dealing with job discrimination and housing discrimination? Did that happen a lot in Salt Lake City?

AH: I don't remember anything like that because they were already established in the Japanese community. My dad had a job with my aunt and uncle, my mom didn't have to work, and we had the Buddhist temple. And I don't remember an out and out discrimination.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Topaz Museum. All Rights Reserved.