Densho Digital Archive - Mas Hashimoto Interview (denshovh-hmas-01-0010)

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TI: So again, thinking about prewar Watsonville, what were some of the, the Japanese, sort of, organizations that were key to the community? Like churches, associations, what were the main ones?

MH: There was a Japanese Presbyterian church, which was not too far away from the Buddhist temple. There was, the YMBA was the Young Men's Buddhist Association, and then the Young Women's Buddhist, they were separate. The Boy Scouts, in fact, the Boy Scout troop is still in existence, a long-continuing association with the Buddhist temple. That's all. One thing that did hold the community together was Toyo Hall, T-O-Y-O. Toyo Hall was the community associations' theater, and it was a big wooden drafty building with a stage, and we would have productions there. The old Japanese silent motion picture guys would come and show their, their films. And these guys that were doing the, you know, projection, they would also read the parts, they were so fabulous. So Toyo Hall was important, and then right next to Toyo Hall was the Japanese school. Mr. Kuroiwa was the taskmaster. He was, his wife was just a beautiful, tall, beautiful lady, so gentle and kind. And then on the other side of the Japanese school was a baseball diamond where our guys played teams from Monterey and Fresno, Sacramento and such. I think about how they traveled in those jalopies for hours and hours and hours to get, to play a game. And I thought, "Wow, they must really love the game." [Laughs]

TI: Yeah, they really loved it. How about things like judo and kendo?

MH: There was a kendo club and a judo club. The kendo, I wanted to be in, do kendo, but you couldn't have a uniform until you were at least seven or something, and I was six. And I didn't go to Japanese school because I was too young. But one of the interesting things was that the newspapers indicated that the judo and kendo clubs, these were the, the seats of the Japanese militarists, and part of the Fifth Column movement, so, "You have to look out for, you have to watch out for guys who know kendo and such." And I remember reading the headlines of the some of the newspapers, issues here, indicating that we're dangerous. This is particularly after December 7th.

TI: Interesting. I want to go back a little bit to Toyo Hall. In Seattle, we had a similar place called Nippon Kan, and, where these performances would happen. And on the stage, they would have a screen with, and on the screen would be advertisements for all the stores. Did you have something similar at Toyo Hall?

MH: Yes, but it was not a screen. My father, who loved the theater, but he was, he couldn't sing, he couldn't dance, he couldn't act, but he could help as stage manager and such. So he made this huge curtain that had the advertising on it. We have a picture of it, huge. So here, different stores would have their advertising on this huge curtain.

TI: So that was a way for stores to advertise and to show that they supported this, they would all pay and help pay for either the hall or the curtain or whatever.

MH: And then one of the things, you know, I remember this, a sound, and the sound of two pieces of wood clicking together, and this would be the start of the next act or something like that. And that sound still resonates in me. Whenever I hear that, I think, "Oh, theater."

TI: That's good. So your dad was, was multi-talented. He was a cook, a caterer, he was artistic in terms of creating the curtain. Are there other things that he...

MH: He was, he was generous, too, in the sense that there's, in the old temple, when he, he and a friend donated one of the pews for the, you know, for the temple. And when the old temple was torn down, some of the pews were saved. Well, somebody saved this one particular pew, wooden pew, and we looked underneath, and it was donated -- it was written in Nihongo -- it was donated by Ikuta Hashimoto and his good friend. And I forgot his first name, but the last name is Ikeda.

TI: That's good.