<Begin Segment 11>

TI: And about this time, when you were in the eighth grade or so, was about the time that your father retired from the railroad business. So tell me why he did that, or what was going on with your father and why did he decide to leave the railroad?

KO: Well, at age sixty-two, he qualified for social security, and I think that was the... and he was sixty-two and his health wasn't really that great as far as laboring and things like that was concerned. But he waited until he qualified for social security.

TI: So at that point, he could then retire.

KO: He retired from the railroad, and bought this hotel. Because, see, in 1940, it was almost approaching '41, I think it was late 1940, Masako was nineteen, Miyo was seventeen, Fumi was fifteen, I was thirteen or so. Bones -- Hiroshi... Hiroshi's nickname is Bones. We had not called him Hiroshi for years and years.

TI: Now, did you have a nickname?

KO: No, I didn't.

TI: Okay, was he about the only one who had a nickname then, Bones? I'm curious, so why'd you guys call him Bones?

KO: I don't know, you'd have to ask him. [Laughs]

TI: You mean you know, but you won't tell me?

KO: Yeah. [Laughs] But anyhow, because his kids were still young, my sister Hisako was (married) at the time, and my brother Kumao had then passed away. But to support his young family, he bought this hotel with whatever monies he had. But the time, it was time for him to receive a pension, his social security as well.

TI: And so did the family then move into the hotel and live there?

KO: Right.

TI: And describe the living arrangements then. Here you have five kids and parents, hotel, so what was the living arrangement?

KO: Well, we had, it was a thirty-two room hotel, but the family took three of those rooms. one room for the kitchen/dining room kind of thing, one large bedroom for Mother and Father, my brother and me, and then another room for the three girls.

TI: So even though you were thirteen, you were a teenager, you still stayed in the same bedroom as your parents, you and Hiroshi.

KO: Yeah. [Laughs]

TI: So that goes all the way back to your boxcar days.

KO: That's right.

TI: When you were living in the rental home, did you then live with, did you still stay with your parents, or were you in a different room?

KO: Pretty much the same. That first house we lived in had a large bedroom, and my mother and father slept in one (bed), Bones and I slept in the other bed in the same room, and the girls had a bedroom upstairs.

TI: Okay. So going back to the hotel, what was the name of the hotel?

KO: It was called the Albion, A-L-B-I-O-N.

TI: And where was that located?

KO: On Southwest Third and Salmon Street.

TI: Okay. And what was the, who was the clientele in the hotel? Who stayed there?

KO: I don't know if they were all daily transients or not. I don't really know whether we had some regulars who stayed... well, they must have been, because one of the so-called regulars who stayed there was Dick Sugimura's mom and dad. When they first married, they married and they stayed at the hotel until time to go to camp.

TI: And during this year that you had the hotel, year and a half, were there certain chores that you had?

KO: Right, right.

TI: And what were these chores?

KO: Well, one of the chores I had, aside from helping with the vacuuming, and sometimes even making beds, the stairs, it was a second floor, second, third floor hotel, you could walk up to the second floor, and the hotel business was there. My job was to polish the brass, what do you call it? Each stair, each step had this brass step anyhow, tread guard or whatever, and my job was to shine that every weekend. That was one of the jobs.

TI: And vacuuming and maybe helping with the beds and things like that.

KO: Uh-huh.

TI: And how did you feel about going to live in the hotel and having this business? Was that, did you have any thoughts about that?

KO: No. Of course, we grew up, we grew up laboring, I mean, my father taught us, Bones and me, from the time we were six and seven, eight years old, how to saw wood and hammer and chop wood for the wood stove. And one of the, because we lived in the yard, we used to scrounge for scrap metal and stuff like that. It was all country kind of living. So work is something that we did and we enjoyed doing, and having chores at the hotel was no big deal. We were glad to jump into it and do that.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2014 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.