Densho Digital Archive
Topaz Museum Collection
Title: Bob Utsumi Interview
Narrator: Bob Utsumi
Interviewer: Megan Asaka
Location: Emeryville, California
Date: July 31, 2008
Densho ID: denshovh-ubob-01-0018

<Begin Segment 18>

MA: So I was curious about Oakland and what the Japanese American community, how they were rebuilding and what Oakland was like when you got back? I mean, what did you find, what... when you returned? Was there any resistance?

BU: You know, very, as I recall, there was very few people that really owned their house from Oakland, so there was very few people that returned to Oakland. But the church was reestablished, what we refer to as OME, the Methodist church, the Oakland Methodist Episcopal Church. And when we got there, everybody used the hostel to get squared away, trying to (get settled). You know, in many cases, just the husband would come back out of camp, get squared away, then call the family. The, there was never unemployment (for) anybody that wanted to work, if they couldn't find something they wanted, they could always go to gardening. Even as a kid, when I got out, at sixteen years old, I worked as a gardener, helped couple dentists who were, had come back from elsewhere, stayed, used the hostel, and they're trying to get their office settled, built, their dentist's office (...). Meanwhile, they were gardening, (to) get some income, and they would hire me to go with them. I helped put in one of two lawns. And then all of a sudden, somebody approached me that some Caucasian family of Montclair district of Oakland wanted a lawn put in, would I do it? Heck, you know, so I went to them and gave 'em an estimate and put the lawn in for 'em. [Laughs] After this experience of helping a dentist put in a couple lawns. (...) Everybody was working, they had to, coming from a sixteen dollars a month to whatever they were getting must have felt like a gold mine.

MA: But you think that the community, a lot of people didn't return to Oakland?

BU: Oh, no.

MA: So the war really...

BU: Lot of 'em did not. Yeah, lot of Oakland people ended up in Berkeley. And there was, kind of strange, there were a couple reasons, I think. One of 'em being the restrictive covenants in some of these (areas). My grandfather, the house that I was telling you about, well, while in Topaz, his real estate agent recommended my grandfather sell the house. Of course, it wasn't my grandfather's by title because he was Issei. It was in my, one of my aunt's name, I think. Anyway, they sold it for $4,500 while they were in Topaz. And that's the house they converted to six units. When they left camp, my grandfather and one of my uncles who was taking care of my grandfather, was looking in the same area to buy, and they couldn't buy because of the restrictive covenants.

MA: And in Berkeley were they...

BU: In Oakland, this is Oakland.

MA: But in Berkeley, was there not as many?

BU: Well, in Berkeley, the areas that they wanted to buy, where most of the Japanese settled, didn't have that. But like the better parts of Oakland -- well, yeah, like north Oakland where my uncle and grandfather wanted to buy, they couldn't move back into where they used to own the place. But they did buy a little further away, and they had a, the clause was in there but they were able to buy the house. I guess the way the restrictive covenant read in those days, you could buy, own it, but you couldn't live in it. That happened to Willie Mays, when he bought in San Francisco. But anyway, my uncle was one of the cases they took to the Supreme Court, and they overturned it and said that it was illegal.

MA: Over this racial covenant? Restrictive covenant, I mean?

BU: Over the restrictive covenant, racial covenants, yeah. They determined it was illegal. And so they moved into the house that they bought, about a mile away from the house that he had before.

MA: So did they pass these covenants, like, during the war?

BU: Oh, no, no.

MA: They had existed before?

BU: They were, they were put in way back. Mainly, I think, originally it was for the, to keep the blacks out. Like I was telling you about Willie Mays, when he, when the Giants moved from New York to San Francisco, he bought in one of the nicest neighborhoods. I think it was the St. Francis Wood in San Francisco, and the covenant said that he couldn't live in it. Well, I think he got, by this time, that he had enough backing or something, and allowed him to live there. Those things, you know, they were existent.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Topaz Museum. All Rights Reserved.