Densho Digital Archive - John Tomita Interview (denshovh-tjohn

<Begin Segment 6>

RP: You mentioned that there was a Chinese section on one side of town and a Japanese section on the other.

JT: Right.

RP: Do you recall some of the other stores or businesses that comprised the Japanese section?

JT: Well, yeah, they had a hardware store. And after the hardware store there was a candy store. And then Furukawa, what they were doing? I know they had rooms upstairs and, and then Sawadas had the, they had the, they had the movie house that the, Sawada, the movie house. And oh, there was always gambling going back there, so. Yeah. Gosh, a lot of the gambling. Then the Hirano, Hirano, they had a room and pool table. That's right, they had a pool table there. And the Ike family had the laundry, they had a laundry. Then our, our house, we had the restaurant. And then Matsushita, that's a barbershop. And, so there's a, I guess a lotta hotels were there. Oh, and Fujimotos, the shoe store, yeah, shoe store. And then yeah, and the shoe repair store. And then another pool, pool hall. Yeah. And then a Chinese restaurant down there. Then our garage, we had the garage there, and the fish store. Well, there were two fish stores right there. And the barbershop. Barbershop, and oh, the bathhouse. We had a bath but we used to always go to the bathhouse. Yeah, Matsura. And another grocery store (...). And the hotel and another fish market, fish market and a shoe store, another... another market. And another barbershop, and hotel, and the dry goods store.

RP: And all these businesses were run by Japanese?

JT: Yes. All Japanese families were running it, yeah.

KP: What kind of, what kind of community events did you go to? What was celebrated in the out and in the Japanese town? Any traditional Japanese holidays?

JT: Yeah, I... you know, those days, I don't know why they, they used to have, celebrate the Emperor's birthday. I don't know why but they always have some kind of program going on Emperor's birthday.

KP: What else do you remember celebrating? Boys Day? Girls Day? Did you do that, or...

JT: Gee, they had the, I know they had the parties. I thought they were graduation party or something. Japanese school graduation, you know.

KP: Did you go to Japanese school?

JT: Yes, I, after the grammar classes we go down to one hour after. I cut that... [Laughs] I think I was a bad boy, I mean...

KP: How far did you get, do you remember?

JT: Well, they called the, I went to every class but as I got older, I used to cut more and so they, they used to call my dad and, and I lied to him. [Laughs] But... yeah, I wish I had studied more.

KP: What, what kind of religion was your family? Or what kind of religion do you remember growing up with or did you?

JT: You know, as far as... we went to Buddhist Temple. Whenever they have ice cream or some kind of, something to eat, I'm right there. [Laughs] But if they're not passing out anything, I'll hang around there but I try not to get, get into the service part.

KP: So was your father's restaurant open seven days a week or just... every day of the week or do they?

JT: Every day of the week. I don't remember that they ever closed. Yeah.

RP: John, do you remember any prefectural picnics for Kumamoto?

JT: Yeah. Yeah.

RP: The kenjinkai?

JT: Yeah. My father's from Kumamoto-ken so, yeah the Kumamoto people. And then they, they had the town picnic too. Yeah, the town. And then we, we all participate in sport. You know, sumo, sumo, yeah. We had a very tough teacher, Mr. Araki. He was one of the, well, actually he was one of the top athlete, the Japanese athlete of that time. I understand he played for Sacramento Solos, tried out for them.

RP: They were a baseball team?

JT: Yeah, baseball. But we had baseball team and our sumo team, I was on that team. We won three tournament in a row so we had a big trophy like this, with our name on it. And, in fact I had that trophy to about twenty years ago. Because I heard that they started the, in Isleton there's supposed to be a museum of the, well, the people of Isleton. So when I visit Isleton one time I took the trophy and... I didn't want to hang on to that thing. And everybody was spread out and whatnot. So, I donated it to the museum in Isleton.

[Interruption]

RP: Do you also, were you involved in any other martial arts like kendo or judo?

JT: You know, they did have it but when we joined, then it folded. So we never continued. Oh, and then the fire took all our equipment so that cut the program out.

RP: You mentioned that you had a movie theater in that downtown area, the Japanese town movie theater?

JT: Yeah. Well, they used, you know, it was just a hall. It was, you know, before the war there was a, the gentleman from L.A. you know, bring the movie to each community, yeah. And in those days he does the talking part. He take the man part, the lady's part, the kid part. And yeah, we used to, we used to see. We used to love the chanbara. Chanbara is old samurai picture. As a kid... next day everybody have a stick and have sword fight.

KP: One other, we've talked about the community you were in, Isleton had a Japanese section, Chinese section, and Filipino section?

JT: There wasn't that many Filipino. Yeah, there was only one or two families. They were... and they come in during the season to do the asparagus cutting and whatnot. Yeah.

KP: Any...

JT: I don't know where they came from, but they were there.

KP: Any other ethnic groups in your community?

JT: I remember there was one black family came in. He, that family was the foreman to one of the farms. He was the foreman. So he had his family there and, and he had three or four children and they didn't know where to put that, that black family. In the white or the Oriental. And he didn't fit in. So, it was only one family, only three kids or something. And what they finally decided, they put with the white. The black family stayed in the white school. And, and mixed with the Asians.

KP: Did you ever have any interaction with those kids?

JT: After my time, yeah so. So I was not involved with them.