<Begin Segment 5>

TM: So your mom finds herself at the Taylor Hotel living with her husband, now newlywed, and she's working in the hotel, it's a hard life.

FP: Right. Oh, and I have to make note, it's an aside, but it's important. They lived together, they loved each other. But you know, in those arranged marriages, oftentimes love blooms, you know. Oh, they were a devoted couple. They were married for sixty-two years, and I never saw the two of them quarrel, they just loved each other.

TM: That's amazing. For your parents, in the Taylor Hotel, did they have other businesses in the 1930s? Were they involved with anything, your father, any other type of work that he was doing?

FP: Yes. Dad was, Uncle Mizuhata was in town to kind of mentor Grandma, to kind of guide Grandma because there was no man about. So he combined with Mr. Mizuhata, my uncle, and they opened up a small mom and pop store on about Twenty-seventh and Sandy Boulevard, where today, there is a H&B loan store, which is a pawn shop where they take, and they advertise that they take in silver and gold and so forth and so on. But it was a nice, I went in and looked around. It was a nice size little shop, and he was often behind the butcher counter, butchering.

TM: Did it, for the shop, to describe it, there was a butcher shop portion of it? Were there vegetables that were being sold?

FP: Oh, yes, it was general purpose. And then they did fine, the market did fine until Safeway came in, and that was just too much competition.

TM: So it was your father, his uncle, and were his brothers involved with the shop as well?

FP: They were very young at the time. So they might have been, it was a family business, so they were probably going in and out, maybe making deliveries, but they were kind of behind the scenes because they were much younger.

TM: And your mother and grandmother, were they working or spending any time at the grocery store as well as the hotel?

FP: Not too much, not too much. They were very busy with the Taylor Hotel, right.

TM: And do you know who the customers were for the grocery store?

FP: It was the people in that area, okay, so it would be the, what we call the hakujins, the Caucasian customers that would come in. And so for a few years, they did fine.

TM: The Taylor Hotel, who was staying there?

FP: The Taylor Hotel? It was often... it was a mixed, mixed crowd, okay. But it was people primarily, that worked. Like on the weekend, the laborers would come in and want to clean up and so forth. Uncle Mizuhata and his wife opened up a bathhouse. And I know at the ONE that there are photos of the bathhouse and so forth, and that's what Mr. Mizuhata and his wife did. Okay, so Grandma was still running the hotel, and Mr. Mizuhata was close by, this is in Japantown. And if you walk to... you know, Taylor Hotel's within walking distance to wherever Japantown is, right. It's very close. It's where the big Chinese lions are, the entrance to Japan and Chinatown, right.

TM: So for the Taylor Hotel, who owned that hotel, or what was that situation?

FP: It was an Italian gentleman named Amato who owned a lot of property in early Portland. And then they were the, and Grandma was the manager. Years later, she did receive a small compensation reparation for the business, but Grandma was never the same. She loved that hotel. So she was never the same, and she always wanted my dad to find a hotel for her that she could run, it was always in the back of her mind until she passed away at age seventy-one.

TM: We're going to come back to that and those details.

FP: Okay.

TM: The grocery store, was that leased or owned?

FP: It was... I don't know about the grocery store, but I know that Taylor Hotel was leased from Mr. Amato.

TM: How long was the grocery store run by your family?

FP: Let's see. I think the 19... see, Mom and Dad got married in about, what, mid-'30s? They lost their first son, and then I was the second child that was conceived. It was stillborn, the first one. So that was probably in about '36, they lost their first son, and then I was born in 1939. So they were married probably about 1935 or '36, okay. And I think... and in that time, that first child was conceived and born in '36 or '37. By '37, definitely, I think. Right.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2014 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.