Densho Digital Archive - Mary Suzuki Ichino Interview I (denshovh-imary-01-0019)

<Begin Segment 19>

RP: So, where were you living at the time of evacuation? Were you living in Boyle Heights?

MI: Oh, I could tell you the address.

RP: Was it Boyle Heights?

MI: It was Boyle Heights, 3420 East Fourth Street. Fourth and Lorena.

RP: Did you own the home?

MI: No, we rented it. We couldn't because my father was not a citizen. They couldn't, even if they applied they couldn't get a citizenship. See, they didn't get their citizenship 'til afterwards.

RP: Right.

MI: Yeah.

RP: It sounds like your dad would have been...

MI: Yeah. He would have bought --

RP: He would have become a citizen a long...

MI: -- long time. And he would have bought this property and that property. He was into that sort of thing.

RP: Business.

MI: Yeah. Kind of a sad time. Some things are meant to be sometimes, you know.

RP: So you did grow up, you spent a little time in Boyle Heights which was a, you know, a little change of pace from some of these other communities like Glendale. With the prejudice the opposite helped you for... Boyle Heights, everybody seemed to get along from what I've heard.

MI: Boyle Heights was, in retrospect, I think we should have more community like Boyle Heights, like they were before, before the war. There's Jewish synagogue. In fact, I don't know if you know but they're going to rebuild that one on Soto Street. They were a lot of synagogues and there was a lot of Hispanics and Asians and Caucasians. We all got along. There was never any discrimination. There was never like, "Oh, you can't live in this neighborhood or you can't live in that neighborhood." Oh, Russians too, White Russians. It was just one big nice community. You don't find that very often. But now it's different. It's all, you know, no longer all that mix. It's more Hispanics now. More majority is Hispanics. But it was, it was wonderful. But you know it's funny, you don't appreciate that until afterwards, at the time that we were living there, yeah.