Densho Digital Archive - George Nakata Interview (denshovh-ngeorge

<Begin Segment 6>

GN: I do remember a funny incident there at the Pomona Hotel when my father used to go after crawfish. One day, he I guess, it was a great day. He brought home a whole bucket full of crawfish, and for a few minutes, he left it there in the living room. Well, the bucket was full of crawfish. Suddenly, crawfish is crawling out of the bucket and onto the carpet. Mary and I jumped on a chair, the two of us on one chair, and we're looking as more crawdads and crawfish are climbing out of the bucket. Suddenly, there's crawfish all around the living room. We were horrified. Luckily, my parents came back in a few minutes, put all the crawfish back into the bucket. But it's an incident that to this day stays with Mary and me as something we'll probably never ever forget.

So the Pomona Hotel and going on the roof and watching the Rose Festival from there, greatest view, Second and Burnside. The parade comes over the Burnside Bridge. We can see it almost head on. The highlight, of course, was seeing the Japanese float. I remember Fumi Sakano being the queen one time. I remember the Boy Scouts drum and bugle corps. We would look for those, the bugle corps and the Japanese float on the Rose Festival Parade. It was kind of a highlight for us. We'd go up there. We'd have snacks with us. We'd have some refreshments, and we'd just sit there for several hours watching the Rose Festival Parade. Do when we returned from Minidoka, I used to look forward to the Rose Festival Parade. And as the years went on, it kind of lost its appeal and glamour, but for the early days of my childhood and early return, the Rose Festival had a special meaning because I just could close my eyes and picture on the roof of the Pomona Hotel just watching the Rose Festival Parade go by.

So yes, we were close to the Willamette River. We didn't live in luxury. Our biggest treat was Chinese food that my father would order, and Chinese restaurants would deliver to your hotel at that time. A big cardboard box with all kinds of white little cartons with wire handles, and we would have a feast. And the other Nakata Family from Columbia Boulevard would come in and join us, and we'd have a big Chinese dinner, and that was kind of a special treat for us. Around that area of course, Chinese and Japanese lived together amongst ourselves. The Wong Family was right across the street from us. There were these gambling houses that were operated by the Chinese that would have like these little Chinese characters and you block those off with a thick leaded pencil, and we weren't supposed to know about it, but I know some of my Chinese friends were runners for those gambling houses. So there were those 1930 version of the lottery operated by the Chinese at that time in Old Town, Old Town now, Nihonmachi at that time. It was quite a life there. It was really our life, and so many stories of the Moria Family that lived behind us on Third Avenue, and Yachang when he got married and going to the marriage ceremony and learning about Shintoism. And I guess even today, oftentimes, weddings are in Shinto, and seemingly, the funerals are in Buddhist, and it's kind of an usual thing as I think about it now. I never thought about it as a child, but did go to some Shinto weddings. I went to some kendo tournaments, some judo tournaments, ate at some of the restaurants. Mary's Cafe was right down the street. There were families that had restaurants and laundries and so much activity that really was something that we did almost on a day-to-day basis.

In the middle of Nihonmachi was the Maletis Grocery Store that stayed there until the 1980s. It was still there on Third and Couch Street. And as I got older, Mary and I used to go down there to get a carton of milk or a loaf of bread, and our entertainment not going just to movies but roller skating and riding our scooter. And we couldn't go across the Burnside Bridge on our roller skates. We had to stop at the halfway mark and turn back and come around again, and it was kind of uphill for us with a scooter. Not too many people ride scooters these days, but scooters and tricycles and roller skates and I'm talking of the old fashioned roller skates made of steel and iron and with four wheels, not the roller blade, you know, the new millennium type, but the old type of roller skates that you'd have a little key, and you'd have these two devices that you pinch your shoes with so that they won't fall off and have a little strap. So we'd be roller skating along there, Yoji and Alice and Dick Uyesugi, and as I mentioned earlier, we wouldn't wander too far. But as I reflect back on dodging in and around drunk people that had fallen down on Burnside Street or Couch Avenue, we were probably pretty good roller skaters, so it was a lot of fun that we had. And we really didn't know about the war per say, and it was rather sudden that we're pulled out of school, and we're packing our bags and baggage, and we're saying goodbye, and that's a chapter of life that Nihonmachi came, Nihonmachi grew, and I guess Nihonmachi kind of disappeared at that point in time.