<Begin Segment 8>

TI: So let's go now to Denver, because this is where you started probably having your first, sort of, memories, because you were, I think, about three years old when the family, your dad was then transferred to Denver.

JU: To Denver, yeah.

TI: So why don't you start off in terms of where your first home was in Denver. Do you recall where that was?

JU: Well, it was very similar to a, to the parsonage in Portland. It was an old Victorian house that had been purchased by the local congregation. And the address is 2801 Curtis Street, and it's right now in downtown Denver. But anyway, it was an old Victorian house. We found out later that it was, a manufacturer had built the house, but it was just a house. And like Portland, it was a house that was big enough that it could house both (church and home), a nice large living room and dining room in Denver, it was with sliding doors that went all the way across the front. And you could hold a meeting of maybe seventy-five people in it. So it was, it's now regarded as one of the historic houses in Denver. I don't know if you learned that or...

TI: No, I didn't see that. But I think I know where it is. I think it's like Twenty-eighth and Curtis was the address. But I was just, as you were talking, I was thinking, so he's going from Portland which, I'm guessing, in, I guess, 1929, had a larger Japanese community than Denver.

JU: It was very... the Portland church was very successful. I don't know if you've seen Linda Tamura's book on Hood River.

TI: Yes, I have.

JU: Well, she mentioned his church in Portland as one of the largest churches on the West Coast, Japanese church.

TI: So he's going, so he's been now minister for some time.

JU: Yeah.

TI: And he's going from a large successful church to Denver.

JU: Yeah. [Laughs] So he had to do it.

TI: Is that something that they generally tried to do, in terms of taking someone from a successful area to place perhaps that isn't as well developed? Or did he do something bad in Portland and they stuck him in the --

JU: No, he had a lovely time. In fact, he had a lovely time almost in every one of his churches. But Denver was different because it was a struggling church. And yes, sometimes the bishops did that, or the superintendents did that.

TI: Now, did he ever talk to you about that, that there was kind of this intent for him to sort of build up something in Denver?

JU: Well, he did that in Spokane and Portland, and I think that they wanted somebody new in Denver.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright ©2009 Densho and the Twin Cities JACL. All Rights Reserved.