<Begin Segment 18>

TI: Any other stories while in Japan during this time? Because I want to get you back to the United States, but anything else?

YK: In Japan?

TI: Any other memories?

YK: Oh, I would... I guess every, once a month or so, I would be a mail courier. Most of us people, we took turns being mail couriers from Toyama to Kyoto. And overnight stay and come back to Toyama. We'd have to pick up mail for our outfit, they didn't have any message or anything back in those days, so we'd have to go down and pick up the pouch, bring it back, and that was pretty neat because we'd go down at ten o'clock at night, get there six in the morning, and go to the billets of the noncom officers of I Corps of the army and have breakfast. Then, in the morning, I would do whatever business our outfit had to do with the I Corps government part, and then in the afternoon I'd pick up the mail and go down. I think the train must have been nine or ten in the morning, I mean, in the evening. So after I pick up the mail, I check it in at the railroad station, from about seven to eight-thirty or so I'd go down to the beer hall, and that's when I used to see some of the people I used to know from over here. Some of the guys that were stationed in Kyoto.

TI: And were these Niseis?

YK: Yeah.

TI: Okay.

YK: They were in the army.

TI: And so it was kind of like a reunion of some type.

YK: Sort of, yeah. Said, "What are you doing here?" [Laughs]

TI: Now was there a place in Kyoto that you knew that they would always be? I mean, is there like a special bar or someplace, or beer hall?

YK: There was one big beer hall, and I guess it was the biggest one or something, but that's where I used to see these people. I never saw 'em in the barracks because they were already all working by the time I got there. And drank a couple beers, go down, take a rickshaw down to the railroad station, grabbed a pouch, and get on the train. That was pretty good.

TI: It sounds like a good time. So we're coming to the end of the interview, but I want to ask one more question. And this is, you have a reputation as a pretty good pool player.

YK: Oh, yeah, used to.

TI: So I wanted to ask about that. How did you come about being such a good pool player?

YK: Lots of practice.

TI: And where'd that interest come from? How did you get interested?

YK: I don't know. I think... I know I played pool in the army, and you see lots of different people there, but found that I was better than most. I think I just pursued it there. Because I don't remember playing pool... I guess I played pool before the army when I was in Portland, and I didn't have too much time then, but I learned how to play. That kind of got me interested. Because it's a simple game, and doesn't take... well, it doesn't take much really skill to excel in that thing. Some of it when you talk about playing for money, it's just like The Hustler. But I wasn't interested in hustling, but we used to play among a certain group of people, and we always used to see how we can better the other. Shooting pool, it seemed like it was about fifteen, twenty years I did that. I got to be pretty good.

TI: And where in Portland did you shoot pool usually?

YK: Bud's Pool Hall mostly. Bud Yoshida had a pool hall right in Japantown. And after the war, he had it for, must have been twenty years.

TI: Good, okay. And just to finish up with your parents, so when you came back, were they still running that small hotel?

YK: No.

TI: What did they do after that?

YK: They tore that one down, and they moved to another hotel, which is right across the street from Shig Sakamoto's on First and Main.

TI: And what was the name of that hotel?

YK: Tourist.

TI: Tourist Hotel. And that small hotel they used to have, what was that called?

YK: I don't remember.

TI: Okay, good. So, Cannon, thank you. This was, went longer than I thought it was going to, but you had so many good stories. So thank you so much, we could have talked probably for another couple hours, there was so much to talk about. But, yeah, thank you so much.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2013 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.