Densho Digital Archive - Art Imagire Interview (denshovh-iart-01-0010)

<Begin Segment 10>

RP: And can you describe a little bit, you mentioned about your brother, a very poignant story, trying to find housing at an unfortunate time. And you finally located that. How about your father? Did he have difficulty finding work as well?

AI: You know, I don't, I honestly don't recall much about, he...

RP: What did he do?

AI: Once he, once he got to Reno he found a job working in the cleaners. And I think it was a, a relative of my wife's relatives. They had a, they had a cleaners in Reno and my father worked there for a while. Then after that, before he got his stroke, he was an elevator operator for the building that my mother was in. And the shop was called the Clay Peters building and if you, if you're familiar with the town of Reno, there's a, there's a gambling casino there called the Virginian and it's between the Truckee River and Harrah's Club. And that's where the, the Clay Peters building used to exist. It was a four-story building, and she had a place right at the front so that you could look down onto Virginia Street. And I remember many times watching Fourth of July parade or Thanksgiving Day parade or that sort of thing, watching it out that window. So that was... she had a, she had a prime spot.

RP: And how did, how did she adjust to Reno?

AI: Well, apparently fairly well. She accumulated a fairly good business. She had customers that were the wives of the gambling hall owners and that's a very prominent people. So she did quite well. She did that until she... she, she kept that shop going while she was taking care of my father. So my father was, when he finally, when he got his stroke he was paralyzed on the right side. But he could get up and take care of himself, so he would, Mother would fix him a little breakfast and then he'd get up by himself and brush his teeth, and he would go outside and water the lawn. He could take care of himself for quite a while. But then, one time she, she collapsed and hit her head in the hallway somehow and ended up in the hospital a bit. So we had to take care of my father for about six weeks and when we did that we said, "Wow. We don't know how she's doing that." Because he, he takes such a, so much effort of taking care of a person. So then I... oh, I lost my train of thought. Anyway, she, we just couldn't understand it because at, by that time, and I don't know, maybe it was about ten years that he'd been an invalid, he was always wetting the bed. He'd get up in the morning and have to have a rubber sheet and change the sheets. And my wife, when we'd just had our first child and was just takin' care of the first child and she had to make a decision of whether take care of the baby first or my father first. So, it was rough, and we're saying, "God, how is she able to do that?" But she was able to do that and did it for twenty years. I was really amazed at that, that she could do that.

RP: Now, she was actually designing dresses and...

AI: Yes, she did some designing on her own, yeah. And, but she did mostly alterations, after Reno she did alterations.

RP: And you mentioned to me that there was generally most people... your business did well but there was one incident with a tenant in that building who did...

AI: Oh, yeah. That's, that was the only discrimination I think that my mother had, was there was, there was a tenant that had an office on the upper floor that was violently opposed to her being in that place. Well, not violently, but she, she demonstrated that she did not care for my mother. If she would come down the elevator she would, and my mother would get in, she would get out and walk down. Or if they went in together, she would turn around and walk up the stairs. Finally, one day... my mother was always trying to be very friendly to her. She'd say, "Hello," and everything, greet her. She was, that lady was coming down and stopped at the third floor, my mother started to get in, that lady rushed out in a huff and started walking down the stairs, tripped and fell and broke her arm. So, and Japanese call it bachi. And bachi is something like, "You get what's coming to you."

RP: Kind of like karma?

AI: Yeah. Something like that.

RP: Japanese karma.

AI: Yeah. So, anyway. That, that was the only... everyone else was very nice. The kids that I associated with -- and the only reason I think that I wasn't bothered with it was if the, if the kids didn't like I was Japanese, just didn't associate with me.

RP: They never subjected you to any verbal harassment, or --

AI: No, I didn't come up against any discrimination. No, none at all. I was fairly lucky.