Densho Digital Archive - Shigeo Kihara Interview (denshovh-kshigeo-01-0024)

<Begin Segment 24>

RP: This is a continuing interview with Shig Kihara. We're on tape three. And Shig, according to a memoir that was written about life, dormitory life in Seabrook, this gentleman referred to an area of Seabrook known as Hoover Village or Hoover Annex. Is that where you lived?

SK: No, no. We lived in the old part, or the main part of the village. Now, I remember hearing that term Hoover Village referred to, but I'm trying to think if that was where the Peruvians lived, okay, which was, like I said, it was an additional area, living area that they added as they hired more and more people. I think that's what it was.

RP: Did you have, did your section where you lived, was there a number or a dormitory number that went along with that?

SK: There was a number on each one of the homes, yes. I don't remember what number ours was now. I don't know why, but I don't remember.

RP: They didn't call them blocks?

SK: No, they weren't called blocks.

RP: Did you have any issues or problems that were associated with making a transition from Manzanar, or I should say, from Gardena where you lived, to Seabrook?

SK: No, I don't remember having any kind of a problem. You know, the transition was, seemed like it was real easy. I don't know, if there was any bias or anything to Asian people, I'll put it that way. In the East Coast, it didn't show up. See, there was not that kind of feeling over there. It was because we, when we went to school and everything, none of that showed up.

RP: Did you feel a sense of being welcomed by...

SK: Yes, I think... yes.

RP: From the company as well as...

SK: Right, I think my parents even felt that way.

RP: Some Japanese Americans who were there at Seabrook consider it, or they term their experience there as a "fresh start."

SK: That's a good way of putting it, because like I said, I don't think that they, or I'll put it, we felt the animosity or whatever you want to call it during that time, because on the West Coast, Dad couldn't find a job. And when he went to, we'll say downtown Sacramento and went into a Woolworth's, they wouldn't even serve him. and this was after the war. They wouldn't serve him, they wouldn't do anything. And like I said, you didn't run into that kind of situation in the East Coast.

RP: So that kind of treatment made Seabrook look even more appealing.

SK: Yes, it did.

RP: From an ethnic point of view as well as an economic point of view like you said, he had no real prospects other than seasonal farmwork.

SK: Right.

RP: So maybe for your family as well as others, it was a new beginning.

SK: Yes, it was. I believe that. I mean, I think it was a real good beginning for a lot of people that were... well, you could look at it in a sense that they lost everything during the war, they didn't have anything to come back to here in California, or they didn't have anything to look forward to in California. And so when they went to New Jersey, they had a new beginning. This person or the company was willing to hire them and give 'em fair wages, a decent living area, and everything. So yes, you could call it a new beginning.