Densho Digital Archive - Victor Ikeda Interview (denshovh-ivictor-01-0024)

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RP: In the days and weeks after Pearl Harbor, do you recall hearing any rumors as to what might happen to Japanese Americans? Of course, you started to be aware of Issei being picked up by the FBI.

VI: Yeah, yeah. And that's what started a lot of question marks of what's gonna happen.

RP: "If they go, when do we go?"

VI: Yeah.

RP: Half entering your mind.

VI: Right, something was gonna happen. Now, we were one of the lucky families 'cause our dad wasn't picked up, but I could imagine a family that the father, one day he's there, next day, boom, he's gone. What are we gonna do? I could really see kind of the trauma they were in, and wondering, hey, the whole community's, once they were picked up, wanted to know, you know, what was gonna happen.

RP: And you were still, at this time you were still living in the hotel?

VI: What happened is after the, right before, I think 1939 or so, the city took over the whole property. So by then, we got an apartment, and that was oh, about seven blocks east, going into the Broadway district -- I mean, Garfield district. It was one, two, three, four story apartment.

RP: You leased it?

VI: Leased it, right.

RP: And ran it.

VI: Yeah. 'Cause most of the apartments and hotels were leased because they couldn't -- first, you couldn't own it, and first you'd need to have money so that they leased it. And that was '39, Pearl Harbor was '41 so he really, it just got started when he had to just kind of give it up, walk away.

RP: So you were responsible for all the maintenance in the apartment building?

VI: Maintenance, the furniture, the equipment, everything else. You lease the building and you, you buy your own things to furnish it. So when you buy an apartment, you buy the lease from the owner, and many times you buy the equipment from the former lease, or lessee.

RP: And you lived in the building, too?

VI: Yes.

RP: And you just had an apartment?

VI: Yeah, I had a small room down in the basement level, which is kind of convenient because the door opened up to the go to the street, so I didn't have to go through the family to go out. [Laughs] And being a teenager, thirteen, fourteen, it's a, some advantages, having your own entry into the house.