Densho Digital Archive
Oregon Nikkei Endowment Collection
Title: George Hara Interview
Narrator: George Hara
Interviewer: Loen Dozono
Location:
Date: February 5, 2003
Densho ID: denshovh-hgeorge_2-01-0005

<Begin Segment 5>

GH: The other thing that separated us, for some reason, the South Portland Niseis were Methodist. They went to the Epworth Methodist Church which is located on Sixteenth and Northwest Portland between Everett and Flanders Street, and they had a very active church program. But the congregation consisted of Japanese family, and most of the South Portland Niseis for some reason tended Epworth Church, a Methodist church, whereas the North Portland tended more to go to the Buddhist Church which is located, let's see, on Tenth Street between Flanders and Glisan, I think. That building still stands. The old Epworth Methodist Church was transferred further south as a historic relic and was placed up on Jefferson where one of the collectors placed a lot of these older homes, but that was like our second home. We attended Sunday school; and initially, they picked us up on a Sunday school, a red Sunday school bus. Mr. Oki was the transport, and he was the bus driver later on. The Sugai, George Sugai, a younger, or older Nisei than us, was the driver, and they would take us to church, pick us up. But as we grew accustom to the route, we walked home after church was over, and we had a choice of walking down Flanders or Everett right on down east, and we would go through the North Park blocks which is on Park right off of Flanders and Everett and then right on down passed the Customs Building to Third Avenue which was the heart of Northwest Japantown, and Fugetsu was open on Sundays, and we bought Japanese confection there. And then we would walk down Third Avenue on up to South Portland and then home. The other route from church was go a little obliquely down Washington Street, and the big shops and some of the big theaters were located. And then when you reach Broadway, we would go up south, and this was where most of the big theaters were located. And later on, this was the big city life was Broadway Street. Jolly Jones, a big restaurant that we used go to later on is located there.

And then going farther east, we would approach Fourth, and there would be a string of movie houses there from Morrison there, the Capital Theater and the Capital Theater was a little different from others. They had a continue vaudeville show in addition to their movie. They showed a second rate movies. Down another street was Circle which showed third rate movies, the third time around. But my favorite was right around the corner from Capital. Yeah, Morrison Street, it was called a Rex Theater, and their film supplies were western, and we would go there and watch western and our western hero, we were a little after Tom Mix. He was fading out of the picture, but we came in the era of Buck Jones came and Ken Maynard, Bob Steel, maybe Hood Gibson. And the singing cowboys weren't our favorite, you know, Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. But I think I remember most is on Saturdays, the theater manager was the most dapper and the friendliest guy you could ever meet. He was a hakujin, and he was one of these that wore a cream or a tan suit and a real colorful neck tie. He wore two-tone shoes. You didn't see that kind of, you know, outfit. And he would let a group of us in on Saturdays, and we were regular customers, getting in for free following the serial. At the end of the serial, the hero or heroine would be in dire difficulty, and we had to wait a week to catch the next installment, and this was a great form of pleasure for us. And then I have to mention that in this sphere of theaters, on Third Street, on Third and Burnside, there were Virtique house, burlesque house, Third Avenue. And farther on up is the Star Theater that had the bump and grind, comedians, and then later on right in the heart of our district on First and Main, they started a burlesque house. This is right on the same block as some of my best friends. And at first, we were too young to, you know, pay much attention or stare at the, you know, who was playing. But later on, this was one form of entertainment that sort of titillated our imagination and we used to go to these.

And so growing up in South Portland, our horizon continually expanded and also because at grade school, one of my favorite was the auditorium teacher. She was in the early years of her teaching career, and she would bring records to play. And the records consisted of college fight song, Wisconsin's fight song and the famous Notre Dame song. And we'd play these records, and by repetition, we learned the words and how to sing 'em. And after school during football season, we would, you know, hop, skip, and jump singing these songs. They would sort of vitalize us, and whereas at Japanese school, we didn't learn American fight songs from the colleges. We learned Kimigayo, the national anthem. To this day, I'm still not sure the meaning of some of the words, but we did learn the song and graduation, I think we sang Kimigayo. And I think with respect to teachers, we're very respectful to them. And Japanese school, we'd bow at the beginning of class. I think we bowed at the end of class. And with the graduation ceremony, each class or some of the classes we'd put on a skit, and I was chosen as the lead man in our class's skit because I was probably one of the few boys, and the other fellow didn't want to take part into that. Anyway, in between these activities, we broaden out into more American oriented activity. To begin with, the public auditorium was located only a few blocks up from, I remember when the public auditorium, I think goes by Keller Auditorium, it's located Third and Clay and the other street above Clay, Market. Anyway, certain times of the year before Christmas especially the Oregon Journal newspaper would have a production there, the popular radio announcers would be the MC's, and they rounded up a panel of singers, and they might have shown short movie clips, cartoons. And after the program was over, each member of the audience received a gift of one of these Christmas socks with nuts or fruits in it. We would take that on to Japanese school for the Saturday, and we looked forward to that program.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.