Densho Digital Archive - Jiro Sugidono Interview (denshovh-sjiro-01-0028)

<Begin Segment 28>

TI: I wanted to ask you, going back to when you first came back to Watsonville, how had Watsonville changed? When you look at the streets, the stores, had Watsonville changed after the war from before the war?

JS: Well, I guess it did, slowly. 'Cause there's lot of building that was there before we went to camp. When I come back, they start breaking it down. I thought it looks good yet, I don't know why, but I guess in order to build something, what they want, they have to break it down. And Watsonville had, oh, they had quite a bit theaters, but little by little they all disappeared. Same thing as the grocery store, they had a lot of grocery store. In fact, they had, one time, they had, right in Main Street, they had a blacksmith, but they don't have that no more. Well, naturally, they don't need that anyway, they don't use horses that much like they used to, see.

TI: Well, how about, like, lower Main Street? How did that change? Because that was heavily Japanese before the war. And what happened after the war?

JS: (Yes), it changed quite a bit. 'Cause after the war, half of the business, the Japanese didn't take over. Or I remember only guy who came back after the war was Ben Torigori, he had a sporting shop, and there was the Enomoto, later on he had a shoe shop. But he, at that time, he had a, like a small store. And they had, Yamaguchi, they had a grocery store, too, and then they, they had other people like Morimune had tofu-ya, Aramaki tofu-ya. So they still had, you know, lot of Japanese. But pool hall was gone, and, but then another Japanese, Kokka, they had, still had the pool hall on his own, he had an ice cream place. And there was a Japanese dry cleaning, it was Matsuoka and Ide, they did dry cleaning. (Yes), but it changed, 'cause little by little, the Chinese took over, they had more Chinese restaurant, and now, later on, the Latinos came over and took over a lot of drinking, bars and this and that. That's where they have, for a while they had a lot of trouble with fighting, this and that. So they cut it down quite a bit.