<Begin Segment 14>

JC: You talked a little bit earlier about the Japanese ghetto in Portland. Can you tell me where that was and what that was like?

SN: Yes. The ghetto was located in northwest Portland between, mainly between Second and Third on this -- from Burnside down to Glisan. And there were old buildings where there were some retail businesses below and upper floors where the Japanese leased their space and rented for transients. And it was, the men did the janitor work and the wife washed the sheets and put new sheets on, and collected the money. And the family lived there also, the kids lived there. It was a very visible way of living, you know. I mean it was down there with, in contact with the transient population which is not very desirable group of people and so on. The Japanese, Niseis grew up, hundreds of them grew up in that area. In southwest Portland, it was the same kind of situation. Many of those buildings have been torn down for urban renewal where the auditorium was built and all those, but it was, it was an area where also the Jewish families lived in that same area, southwest, but they ran the second floor of hotels in all these places there which is completely dependent on the transient trade.

JC: What was the relationship with the Japanese American community to the Jewish community or the Italian community or the gypsies or all of those other minority groups?

SN: I don't think they socialized very much with them, especially they didn't socialize with the transients or the gypsies, but they did associate somewhat with the Jewish. I mean, especially southwest Jewish community people went to school together with the Japanese and a lot of them knew each other, and they got along very well. The Jewish kids that lived in the Southwest, that was sort of like Jewish ghetto there too. They went to Lincoln High School and what's the other school? I can't think of the other school they went to, the grammar school. They did go to, they did go to Lincoln High School and that's why Lincoln High School had so many smart people, smart people. It's always had a reputation. My three boys all went to Lincoln High School.

JC: So you're saying that Lincoln was a smart, was a smart school because there were so many Asians and so many Jewish people there?

SN: [Laughs] That's right. I would say that Japanese names were always on honor rolls in high school and also in -- I don't know why, but I was never very, smart enough in school. I was getting A's and so on, but I wasn't that real smart. But there were some Japanese Niseis students in high school that were really bright in Washington High School, very bright students there, did straight A's all the time. It's just really amazing how the Japanese Americans were doing, did so well in school. I think it's, maybe they're not that smart, but there is a carryover where education is so important in Japan, and it's carried over by their mother and father that studied hard, that's most important. It's emphasized so much, and I think that's where the big plus for the Japanese Americans, that the education was the most important thing.

JC: And following up on that, that same emphasis is true in the Jewish community with what you said earlier, adversity. So you have the combination of stressing the value of education, having adversity in your life --

SN: That's right.

JC: -- to excelling at Lincoln High School.

SN: Yeah, right.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.