Densho Digital Archive - Henry Nishi Interview I (denshovh-nhenry

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RP: Now, your father was able to buy a house in West Los Angeles when you were, when he was running...

HN: Because we had the business out here and we lived in Hollywood and they wanted to give up the business in Hollywood altogether, Mom wanted to retire from... 'cause it was such a, it was real hard for her to run a, run a shop. So he wanted to move out to West L.A. and then, at that time, back in the, yeah, back in the '30s, there was a lot of land available out here in West L.A. And it was very, it was cheap. He was able to buy a lot, which he only paid like $500 for a lot and he built, built the... this was in nineteen... let's see, when did the war, '41?

RP: '41.

HN: Yeah, because '40, he built the... completed in November of 1941. And the war broke out in December. And we had to relocated. So he had just, just finished, finished the house in November of... a brand new, a nice home. Yeah.

RP: And what happened to the house when you, you had to go to Manzanar?

HN: It just so happened that our, the mailman that delivered mail to this house, our house, he asked if, that he would rent the house while we were gone. And we took up, took him up on the offer. His rent, by him paying the rent, we were able to pay, pay the mortgage. And we had a lawyer, an attorney that took care of all of this, the matter. He collected the, the rent. He took care of those finances. So we were very fortunate that, that somebody, a very honest person that did all these things for us. That really believed in us. Which was very, very fortunate. Opposed to a lot of people that, that they just dropped everything and left.

RP: Especially a home that you had just completed building just a month before.

HN: Yeah.

RP: What was the...

HN: And not only that, the mailman offered to... of course, we had a two-car garage, he says, "Why don't you take one half of the garage and store some of your stuff?" Which we did, and he took care of. And of course being a brand new house, Dad bought all new furniture from Barker Brothers. Then it was delivered and we didn't want to store it in the garage. So at the time, he had put it in public storage, one of those storage companies. They kept it. There again, the attorney took care of paying, paying the rent for the storage. So when they came back, the house was there, the furniture was there. Like, like the day that he left.