<Begin Segment 3>

MH: Did you go to Japanese school?

EF: Yes, we did.

MH: And where did you go?

EF: Gresham/Troutdale had a Japanese school right at the GT Hall. That's where the school was at.

MH: Tell me a little bit about GT Hall?

EF: Well, I should know something about it because I'm the one who helped the JACL president the year they decided... it got to be a problem due to the fact of the structure was starting to deteriorate, and I think we were only allowed to have six or seven people in that building at one time. So I think it was in 1965 that we tore that building down due to the fact we couldn't hold any functions there anymore. But in the meantime, this was an old, this was an old building that they converted into a community hall. The Japanese community did all the work on it. And they built classrooms in the basement for the Japanese school, and we had, upstairs was judo for judo, kendo practice and those things, and I know we used to have Japanese movies there also, so it was a pretty good size area.

MH: How did they do the upkeep for it? Did they have any functions to earn money?

EF: Oh, yes. Yeah. We had lots of functions, and other organizations would like to use the place too, and we got, you know, funding from them and funding from the Japanese community. That's how we managed to keep it up.

MH: What has happened to that piece of property now?

EF: That piece of property was for sale for many years. After we tore it down in 1965, I remember that because I was JACL president back then, and I'm the one that was, had to tell the people who were going to do the work about it and what kind of money we were going to pay for that. But they did it all in one day, so it was here and gone. But anyway, the property end was blank. It was nothing there besides the land, and it sat for about fifteen years I'd say. And finally, we got an offer from the nursery people that had land next to it, and they decided they'd liked to buy it, so we sold it to them.

MH: Do you remember what you sold it for?

EF: I probably remember the price, but I don't know whether I should...

MH: That's okay.

EF: I don't know whether I could quote the price, but it was a nice price. And all of a sudden, it was a property of value. That is why it got into that position. In other words, we held on to it long enough to, before we could even give it away because I had some friends who I offered that property to, and we were only talking about three or four thousand dollars at that time, and it went a lot higher than that.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.