<Begin Segment 10>

MN: And I think you mentioned in a conversation that there were also a few non-Japanese clients at the Miho Hotel? Who were they?

KM: Some of them came from Hana because from Hana, if you wanted to come into town, those days, it was almost impossible to come into town and then go back the same day. It was such a long trip. It wasn't a three-hour drive like it is today. Even today, it's a three-hour drive, but those days it was an overnight affair. So a lot of the Hana people used to stay at our house, different nationalities: Hawaiian people, there's Filipino people.

And then E.K. Fernandez, who did all these shows, the elder E.K. Fernandez, when times were good, when the carnival business was good, he would be staying at the Waikiki Grand Hotel. But certain years, the carnival business wasn't so hot, then he would stay at our place. So I got to know Mr. Fernandez and even the son that passed away not too long ago. That was his second or third wife. And now the family, the younger generation, has taken over. But I used to know the E.K. Fernandez.

MN: You know, when, say, the Maui Fair was on, how did that affect this?

KM: The Maui Fair, it kind of interrupted with our regular clientele. Because we would have the, not the main attraction people. The main attraction people would stay at Grand Hotel. But the sideshow people would stay at our hotel. Like the ones that I remembered, the World's Tallest Man, he stayed at our hotel. The one that I remember the most and I got along with really well was this, he was supposed to be the Egyptian, Haji Ali, if I recall, Haji Ali. He and another man, I don't know what the other man would, but all the time that they would have free time, they would play dominoes. That's when I first got exposed to dominoes. Every free time they had, the two would be involved in dominoes. But what his talent was, I think he had a double stomach. He was one of those that would swallow certain things, marbles, and then you want the black marble, red marble, he would spit out different colored ones and he takes all kinds of things into the stomach and get it out. It was quite a thing. I remember that he had caught a cold or something on one trip. He's not one, he used to come for several years as a sideshow attraction. And one year I remember distinctly that he had a cold or something so I had to take him to, at that time, Dr. Izumi was already in business. So I took him to Dr. Izumi and got him taken care of. And the doctor told me, I remember years later, that the doctor told me, he said, "You know the man that you sent us over there? He's strange." I said, "Why?" He said, "The x-ray shows that I think he has two stomachs." That's my clear recollection, was the doctor telling me that, what kind of man he was. Because he thought that the x-ray showed distinctly that this person had two stomachs. And to this day, they are... I saw, years later, in the 1960s and '70s, on my trip to Japan, one of the nightclub shows, I saw this Japanese man with the same kind of trick. And evidently, he was a very well-known Japanese performer. But the word was that he had two different stomachs. And when I saw him in Yokohama, of course, my recollection of the earlier days is so vague. But very intricate. He would swallow goldfishes and take out, live goldfishes and take out the live goldfishes, and put in marbles and lighted bulbs and all kinds of things. It was fantastic. But we had all these sideshow people living and staying in my place. So I got a free show of these, lady with the most beard and things like that, lived at our house, "monkey man" as I recall. Who else? The trapeze actors and things, some of them. So I got exposed to all these carnival people.

MN: Your friends must have been envious of you.

KM: Oh, yeah, yeah.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.