Densho Digital Archive - Ted Hachiya Interview (denshovh-hted

<Begin Segment 4>

MP: So going back to your mom and dad, was your mom as, was she strict like your dad or was she more --

TH: No. That's the strange thing. Mom was a very quiet person, and she always, every time Dad scolded us or whipped us, why, she was always trying to comfort us. When Dad died in the year of '43, I figured that I had to take over, but she didn't let me take it over, I mean about the family affairs. She became a very strong-willed woman, and she was perfectly capable of running the business that was left to us. We had a hotel, you know.

MP: Yeah. So Ted, tell me about the whole hotel story and history of that building and so on and how you got that.

TH: Well, Japanese people have a tendency to go into the grocery, the barber shop, the laundry business, or the rooming house business. We didn't call it motels those days. It was a rooming house. Maybe some of them were twenty or twenty-five rooms strong. But my dad was not a pioneer, but there was, he had his eye on a hotel called Matisson Hotel at the time. It was run prior to the time it was offer for sale by a Japanese family by the name of Furusho, and I don't know what he called it at that time. But that hotel was offered for $29,000 by the First National Bank, and my dad was a, offered to pay that money, and he sent me to the bank to dicker for that, and I was only sixteen years old at the time. And I remember I, you can always come up, I learned this from the Jewish people that I associated with. You could always come up if you had to pay more if you want it bad enough. But you started low, and I offered him $15,000, and they looked at me and asked me how old I was. I said I was sixteen and I have a guardian. He says, "Well, we'll take it up with the board and let you know in a week." About a week later, there was a fellow by Bushnell and Bennett. They both got on the phone and told me, he says, "You can have it for that." But I said, "There's a catch. You got to pay all the back taxes on it," and they had to have another board meeting. So they paid the back taxes on the darn thing, and I think I made them an offer of so much down. I don't remember exactly how much, oh, it was $3,000 just offhand, $3,000 down and $300 a month payment on the thing, and they accepted the darn thing. And that turned out to be a real godsend for the family. We bought it in 1938. And Dad had his eye on that darn thing, and we were one of the first of our people to own a hotel that large. It had 117 rental rooms, but the hotel was originally designed to be something like that like 130, but we occupied one-fourth of the first floor for the family's use.

MP: When you made that purchase, Ted, how did you, you were sixteen, how did you, how did you dress or how did you --

TH: My father, he bought me an overcoat, a hat, and the thing that I remember most was a briefcase that was thrown out of the window couple times to make it look worn, and I carried the papers in it, and that's when he asked me how old I was. It was so funny. I said I had a guardian." He says, "Well, do you got an attorney?" I says, "I have an attorney." It was my grandfather's attorney. His name was Maclair in Hillsboro. He was an attorney for the Mailing Family that started the Birds Eye Cannery. And oh, I think Dad worked for them, I mean, Grandfather worked for them for quite a while after he quit the University Club, went to Japan with his, you know, to be with his family, retire so to speak. But Grandma was a spender. She spent all that money and send him back to America to make a lot of money, so he went to work for Mailings as a private cook, and Mailings had a beautiful house down there in Depoe Bay. Some people might have seen it, you know. I think it's been sold out of the estate, but I remember Mrs. Mailing. She used to come after us with a, there was a car called Accord. She was a sporty woman, but boy was she thrifty. She raised strawberries and took them to Depoe Bay, the city Depoe Bay, and sold them. She didn't give them away, but I don't know why. I remember particularly she had us pick them when we spent two weeks down there for vacation.

MP: So your dad worked for Mrs. Mailing?

TH: No, grandfather.

MP: Your grandfather worked for Mrs. Mailing?

TH: Yeah. She was famous for her canned peaches, and that's how they got started, you know, the canning business. I guess now it's frozen food, but the Mailings doesn't own any of it. He sold out years ago. That man weighed 300 pounds, Mr. Mailing. I remember, he broke the bed in the Arlington Club. He was a member there where my father worked. He broke the bed, and they had to hire a carpenter to rebuild the bed. He's 300 pounds. He was a big man, but he was a kindly man. He loved kids, you know. He always kept us, gave us a dime. The old days, that was a lot of money.

MP: So your grandfather worked for Mrs. Mailing or the Mailings, and your --

TH: That's the second trip see. Grandma sent him back to America. I think he came back in 1932. I keep remembering that because I was still in grade school then.

MP: And you were here?

TH: Yes. I never went to Japan until I, when my wife and I celebrated our 25th, Mother insisted I go back and meet the relatives, so we never had a honeymoon. We got married in Salt Lake City in the Methodist church, would you believe. But she gave us, I think, $1,500 for the trip.

MP: What was that like going back to Japan?

TH: Well, both my wife and I can speak fairly fluently in Japanese because we were, well, my wife was the, she was the third girl in the family, but her family spoke Japanese at home. And my mother couldn't speak English at all. She could understand it, but she couldn't speak it, so we spoke Japanese at home, so I was fairly fluent. After I stayed there for about two weeks, I was like a native. I could jabber away in Japanese just as good as a native. I don't know how it came to me... oh, yeah. My dad did send us to language school, Japanese school. I went through sixth grade, and I quit and played football instead.