<Begin Segment 9>

TI: Okay, so he goes to Denver, and I'm looking at the year 1929, and that's the year of the crash in October that started the Depression.

JU: And he came in June.

TI: And so he gets there just months before the Depression starts.

JU: That's right.

TI: So tell me about --

JU: It was a tough time.

TI: Yeah, those years, for the church and the family.

JU: Well, oddly enough, the church does better in depressions than it does in... because they, I think the problem is when more than one person is suffering, it does something for a community. That's why I chose the title "The Beloved Community," because... and that's stolen from Josiah Royce, of course, the philosopher. You know about Royce? Anyway, not many people know about Josiah Royce. But anyway, he coined the phrase "the beloved community," and he's the one who I've gotten a lot of my ideas about what real things are worth. Anyway, that's what happens, and I think it's happening now. Because a lot of the churches have realized that they've got to do something for the people who are out of work and so forth. They've got to show their real heart and where it is. If somebody's, if a dozen people in your congregation lost their jobs, what do they do? Even large families. And you've got to band together or you perish separately.

TI: Well, I'm wondering, in your case, you sort of grew up in the Depression. And you probably didn't even realize that there was anything different than how you were living. But describe, I mean...

JU: That's probably true.

TI: Because ministers generally don't make that much money, and you had seven siblings, so eight children. How, do you ever recall your family struggling with just food on the table or things like that?

JU: Well, that was the amazing thing. Most of the Japanese community in Colorado -- in fact, his parish was called Colorado, Southern Wyoming, Western Nebraska. That's (...) all of Colorado. That's the eastern side of the mountains and the western side of the mountains. So he was technically in charge of the Denver area, including those places near Wyoming. Because that's where the Japanese communities were started particularly after the railroad got completed. What are they going to do? Most of them wound up in truck farms. And, of course, fortunately for the church, when the truck farms start, you're growing a lot of things that nobody can afford. And so the church survived on the things that couldn't be bought. And that's an actual fact in Denver. And it melted that community together, and melded, I guess, is the better word. Because they knew everybody was suffering. And it didn't, really didn't, give much worth to the fact that they were Buddhists, they were Christians, everybody, they needed help.

TI: And so was the situation where, so the truck farmers would have excess, I'm not sure, inventory or excess food. They'd bring it down to the church --

JU: They'd bring it to the Denver market, and what they didn't sell, they dropped off at the church.

TI: And then the church became almost like a food bank where people would come?

JU: Exactly.

TI: And if they were hungry, there was food there.

JU: Exactly. And that happened for years. At least from '29 to '35, that was absolutely true. And many times there wasn't, you know, the celebrations. They couldn't do it alone, the celebrations. The holidays were big during the Depression. [Laughs]

TI: Well, how about the winter months when the truck farms weren't producing food? What would happen there?

JU: Well, they know how to store potatoes for the winter. And Denver's weather is not severe. They go to zero once in a while, but only once or twice a year. Whereas lovely Minnesota goes for a month at least. And below zero for a month is tough in Minnesota. But there again, even now, I think... I go to Hennepin Avenue Church, and we notice even the last few months the food lines have grown. We used to have, we used to have dinners for the community, anybody who wants to come, free for, every Sunday for years. I've been at Hennepin Avenue about forty years now. But anyway, we noticed the people off the street, and even in the cold, come in about 150 people. Now it's 350, and that's only over the last years. And it's amazing what the church's function seems to be, to service a community better during bad times.

TI: Well, so let's go back to the Depression years, because that's what your father needed to do and not only your father, but the whole family, I'm guessing, had to chip in to do this. Because operating the church, let alone the food and these other services, is a... now you have these large nonprofit organizations who do it. And it sounds like yours was more of a, almost like a family operation.

JU: It was for a long time. But you know, the family gets a lot of support from the community. Some of the people who started way back then are still doing it. [Laughs] And so our family is involved, of course, but the community is really involved. It's got to be one of the virtues of the church.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright ©2009 Densho and the Twin Cities JACL. All Rights Reserved.