<Begin Segment 14>

LD: How about a radio? Did you listen to the radio?

HT: Oh, radio, we didn't have a radio. We didn't have a radio. The first one we ever had was when we went back to Troutdale and we didn't have a radio, but the car, when we bought the car, it had a radio in it and that was something in those days to have a radio in the car. So another thing was we used to listen to baseball. But at that time, a good friend of our family, there was a wrestler, Japanese wrestler that just started, you know. And as you know, Isseis liked sumo and wrestling. So anyway, we, this fellow, his name was Don Sugai, lived in Salem. He's just a young kid and start taking up wrestling. So at night, we used to all, after taking a bath, we used to go out to the car and just listen to the wrestling match. That was our first experience on the radio was in a car, yeah. There's so many things that you forget about, but that was our first experience on radio.

LD: So you looked up to Don Sugai, and how about other heroes? Who do you recall being heroes that you would look up to when you were young?

HT: I have nothing right away. You think about sports. You think of Mr. Frank Fukuda, our sensei, you know. I always looked up to him being our instructor. He's always teaching us Japanese, plus coaching us, you see. The two guys that we really looked up to as far as sport goes was George Okuda was the president, not the president, the pitcher, and the shortstop is my cousin, Tom Takeuchi. Those two were the leaders in the Nisei group at that time. They were real good and we kind of looked up to them, kind of patterned after them too, yeah.

LD: Outside of the Japanese community, were there other American heroes in sports or war or whatever, the military?

HT: Oh, not really. I kind of like the in our business, kind of friendly with Don Yates, he was, kind of helped me along and kind of loved their family, and then we kind of got close. He was good to us too, yeah. But there's several in our line of business, you know. The neighbor, I mean, the association. There was Ken Santien and Don Yates, you know. We were really get close to or look up to and work together.

LD: Why did you look up to Don Yates? What was the story behind that?

HT: Well, he was, always helped me and encouraged me in the store and helped me in the store, and we had associations, you know. He was always backing me up, you know. In fact, of course we were pretty active, you know. In fact, I was elected to be president of that association. That association just happened the year that they opened up the freeway, I-84, so we had to go and make the presentation there. I'll never forget that, I was so scared. But Don helped me in those lines, you know. He was really helpful and pushed me to take active part in different things, so I give a lot of credit on that part, yeah.

LD: Was he a fellow store owner?

HT: No. No. He was... well, no. He was in the insurance. He was, at that one time, he had a furniture store too, but he had different things to do, yeah. Yeah, those all come to my mind since you mentioned it.

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