Densho Digital Archive - Shig Kaseguma Interview (denshovh-kshig-01-0004)

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RP: Let's go back to your growing up in the Seattle Japantown. What do you remember about Japantown? Any particular places? Can you give us kind of like a visual picture of the community?

SK: It was like home. Because although we didn't speak Japanese except in the house, as soon as my oldest sister learned English in high school, she was the oldest, consequently, we all learned to speak English, too, because of her. But when you went down to Japantown, it was kind of nice because there was place to eat and the bathhouses were great. There were two bathhouses then, and they were great. But people didn't take bath except once a week. [Laughs] It was too expensive. And at home, we didn't have much of a hot water for all us. You had to burn wood and had a little tank for that big, a gas tank, how could you bathe five kids, six kids. So it was kind of a nice feeling to be there because it was like family, big family. Because everybody knew each other. All the kids went to the same school, just about. So we never felt that we were deprived. (...) Kids are never deprived, unless you had a mean father and mother. So we lived a fairly nice life. And personally, I think we didn't suffer or anything. There was a Baptist church that was only about a block and a half away from us, I think it was probably mentioned by a lot of kids. There was a Baptist (church), but they had a gymnasium and all the boys loved to go there. (Although) my mother insisted we go to my Episcopal church, which is only about another block and a half away on the Yesler Way by cable car. In fact, it was 1010 Yesler, was the address. It was a house, which became a church. But I think we led a pretty secluded life, not knowing what the other people were doing. The Caucasian people were not part of our life. Because they weren't part of our life, either. They didn't want us to be part of their life, consequently we lived our own life.

RP: Right, yeah, and you had a really tight-knit, cohesive community to support, for support. 'Cause, I think you hit on the nail there, it was very threatening to go out anywhere else, in terms of being reminded that you were of different ethnicity. Were there places that were off limits? I talked to Victor about this, public places, theaters, or in Southern California, there were pools that would not allow Japanese kids.

SK: No, we never had that problem.

RP: It was just more secure to be amongst your own.

SK: Yeah, it was more secure, and it was more fun. And why would you want to do anything else? Kids always like to play ball. And we played, there weren't too many playfields near us, and they never made too many playfields anyway, except by Broadway High School. But we played on the street, because there were hardly any cars. And we always played baseball on the gravel road. If a car came, we'd throw rocks at it, because we didn't want it to interrupt our game. But there was a field where near Harborview Hospital is presently. And there was a, we had a field up there. But when the Harborview Hospital came into existence, that building was quite large and they took our playfield.

RP: They took your field away.

SK: And so, a lot of the other people lived further east of us. They were the Collins playfield, I think Victor probably told you. He didn't, because Victor lived near us, nearer to town. He lived on Eighth Avenue and Yesler, and we were on Ninth. So, it was, it was quite a secluded life, in the little circle. Even among the Japanese family, it was quite secluded. You lived in the neighborhood, that you play with the kids in your own neighborhood. And each one had their own neighborhood and we played football against each other. It was a team, and they formed a league.

RP: A football league?

SK: Football league. And they also had basketball, was intense, and baseball was pretty intense. And we all had our own teams, neighborhood teams.