Densho Digital Repository - Warren H. Watanabe Interview

Densho Digital Repository
JACL Philadelphia Oral History Collection
Title: Warren H. Watanabe Interview
Narrator: Warren H. Watanabe
Interviewer: Herbert J. Horikawa
Location: Medford, New Jersey
Date: August 27, 1994
Densho ID: ddr-phljacl-1-2-1

<Begin Segment 1>

HH: Today is August, Saturday, August 27th, the time now is two o'clock, and we are at Medford Leas in the interview. May I have your full name, please?

WW: My full name is Warren H. Watanabe.

HH: And the name of your wife?

WW: My wife's name is Mary.

HH: And how many siblings do you have?

WW: I have one living younger sister and one older sister who died a number of years ago.

HH: When were you born?

WW: I was born on August 12, 1921.

HH: Where were you born?

WW: San Francisco, California.

HH: California. The name of your parents?

WW: Isakatsu Watanabe and his wife's name is Toshiye.

HH: Okay. Let's see. You were born in San Francisco, and as you remember San Francisco, what kind of city was it while you were growing up?

WW: Well, I grew up in the Japanese section of San Francisco. It was a small, relatively a very small city then. As a matter of fact, the size probably has not changed very much because San Francisco is on a peninsula, and the city area has not changed or cannot change very much. But I recall it as... what I think of is the community itself around the Japanese section. We lived right in the middle of it, and it was a very easy place in which to live. The shops were half a block away or a block away, and the life was, to a large extent, centered in the community. There was a local church and a local Boy Scout troop. The grammar school was a couple blocks away, and it wasn't until I went to junior high school up the hill to a place called Pacific Heights. That was for two years, and it wasn't until I went to high school that I think I went well beyond the boundaries of the Japanese community. High school was Lowell High School, which was a little bit far away over, I recall somewhere near Golden Gate Park, although I haven't been back there, I don't remember. As I grew up, I know I went beyond the community and went out to the library and the Civic Center and so on. But all in all, I think it was a rather pleasant place. Certainly in my youth, I wasn't aware of anything very much beyond that particular group of people.