Densho Digital Archive
Oregon Nikkei Endowment Collection
Title: George Nakata Interview
Narrator: George Nakata
Interviewer: Masako Hinatsu
Location: Portland, Oregon
Date: August 23, 2004
Densho ID: denshovh-ngeorge_2-01-0007

<Begin Segment 7>

MH: Before we get to your story on the assembly center, tell us about what kind of people stayed at your hotel, and what were the rooms like other than the large room that had all those beds in it.

GN: When you came up the flight of stairs to the Pomona Hotel, the first floor, kind of mezzanine first floor, was this huge room, and they were basically all transient people that stayed there just a night or two paying only a few cents, and they'd come in at all hours, and that's why we had Adam Manola as a night clerk because they might come in at 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. A lot of them would really stagger up the stairs as I understood it. The upper floor, the second and third floor where we stayed, we had several rooms to our family. Those were more permanent folks like Jimmy Moldenov. They were people that generally didn't have a family. They were mostly bachelors where people that had lost their families, lost their wives. I was too young to explore into their background, but they were mostly men, seemingly old to me, but they were probably in their thirties and forties. They were not really old, relatively old to a young child. They would pay their rent sometimes by the week, sometimes by the month. Their rooms were very simple, had a large bed, had a dresser, had more like a community down the hall bath facilities. It would have a sink with running hot and cold water in the rooms. There would be the steam heater there. So as you enter the room, you'd see a steam heater, you'd see a window, you'd see the dresser, you'd see the sink, you'd see the bed, you'd see a closet, quite simple, not elaborately furnished, but all the requirements, and we had a few, very few what they call at that time housekeeping rooms that had actually a portable stove therein, but very few. Most of the long time tenants would mainly eat outside, or Jimmy and Adam might eat with our family as we became very, very close to them. So mostly, they were older men maybe between jobs. Some of them were gainfully employed I'm sure, and they were sometimes railroad workers in between jobs, mostly good people, hardworking people. On the lower level, the transient people we never got acquainted with. They came up only to pay their rent and by morning, most of them were gone, and a new group of folks would come in to the hotel. And I think that Japanese didn't own the building ever, but they operated the hotel business. And so whether it was the Globe Hotel or the Ray Hotel, the Pomona Hotel, the Teikoku Hotel, I believe that in the Southwest sector of Portland or the Northwest sector of Portland, they were all similar. They were all mostly transient people, very few housekeeping rooms, mostly men, mostly bachelors, mostly folks without children, without wives, without families that stayed in those hotels.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.