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"One of the things that was funny was that, of course, we were running around all over the place all the time. But there was this Japanese thing that kids were not to be seen in the business. I don't know if that was because they were worried about getting accused of child labor or something. I don't know what the thing was, but I think it was mostly just a tradition. That a business—you can't have your kids running around inside the business. And so one of the things that would happen is we'd be playing around in there and then as soon as the door would open. we'd have to go running into the back room as fast as we could to stay out of sight. So that was one of the things.
And of course, we were all assigned jobs and so one of my main jobs that I remember—I must have been only like six or seven years old—was to take all of the—people would come in with the—all the soft drinks and beer and everything were in these bottles with deposits on them. So all these people would bring bottles in to get their, I don't know what they got, 10 cents or something. My job was to take those bottles and take them far into the back of the market. In the back, there was a big—you could drive down an alley over by Colonial Hotel and it wrapped around the back and there was a big open dirt parking lot. So all the businesses accessed—all the deliveries and stuff came through the back. So there were these long buildings, you know, long buildings going inward off the storefront. I had to take all those bottles back there into the back and put them in their respective crates so that when the, for instance, the Coca-Cola guy came, he would take off with all the bottles."
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Lisa Imamura: I would always come with my dad on the weekends because Pee Wee's gas station was right here in the corner and in one of the bays because he had two, two or three, in one of the bays he actually had a poker table. The guys from the Rose Park neighborhood, including my dad, they would go into the bay and play poker and I was outside wiping down the car because my dad was like, “Oh, we're going to go wash the car today."
Trey Imamura: You’re going to wash the car today!
Lisa Imamura: I was little so I didn't know any better. He had one of those—it was a tin tub and it had this thing on top of it where you put the chamois through and you roll it and it squeezed out all the water in the chamois. Yep, I remember it, like it was yesterday. But I loved it. I got to be with my dad, right? So it was so fun.
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Craig Nagasawa: "Often I would I would wait and stop about three quarters of the way was Nisei Watch Shop. So there was this guy, I don't know his last name [Roy Omura] but, he worked on watches and it was the old days and he had these glasses with like about 10 different things that flip down on one eye, so he could magnify so he could see the watches. I always remember going in there. and being fascinated with him sitting there over this thing. He would look up and his one eye would be, huge because he had this magnifying thing on his eye. But it was a kind of cool place, there were clocks and cuckoo clocks and all different kinds of watches and clocks all over the walls and they would like have alarms and they'd be going off. I always liked hanging out there. I would just sit there and my mom would do her banking and come back and then pick me up on the way back and we would go back.
So all of those little things like that just were so much like an extended family community that it was just a wonderful feeling of always—you always felt safe. You always felt—you were never hungry. You always felt like somebody would take care of you if something happened."
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Craig Nagasawa: "Mihoya was a manju shop run by my grandmother. It was just down the street from the fish market. They would daily make a whole new batch of manju and there were these glass cases in the front that they would all go in and these little lacquer boxes. People would come in and either buy a whole bunch at one time in a big box or you could buy even just one manju if you wanted. There was all kinds, there was the steamed kind, there was the sort of soft, chewy kind. At New Year's, there was the pounded rice mochi, and then there was all this Japanese confectionery stuff in packages that came from Japan—candy, kids’ candy, and senbei, all of those kinds of Japanese goods were all in there.
My grandmother was mostly—at first, she was always at the fish market, but once things—when I grew up, my mother started working there as well. So then my grandmother moved down and opened Mihoya. So again, we would just run back and forth between them. I used to play them off against each other. I'd be like, “Can you give me a dime so I can go get some candy at Mihoya?” and then give me a dime at Sunrise, I'd run down to and buy something for a dime. then I’d asked my grandmother, “Can you give me a dime so I can buy something back at Sunrise?” And of course, it was all the same family, so they could care less. They'd give me a dime and I'd run back up to the fish market and I'd buy like an orange soda pop or something.There was always this going on. We were always bargaining with the adults to try to get some candy or something."
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Lisa Imamura: " I remember coming to Japantown because my grandmother always wanted to go to the fish market. I remember walking in there and just smelling the fish. It wasn't a bad smell or a disgusting smell. It's just fish."
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Lisa Imamura: "Sunday dinner was Pagoda’s. Every Sunday, you know, it was like clockwork. "
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Craig Nagasawa: "Once, Robin Doi, who was slightly older, he's probably like three, four, five years older than me and Wade. Wade Doi and I were the same age. When you're 15, you want to drive really badly. Everybody wanted to drive. I think it was a kind of feeling of the ticket to freedom or something. Being cooped up in Salt Lake or being cooped up down there on First South, so we were always begging to try driving back there in the parking lot—in the dirt parking lot where nobody could hassle you for being a kid driving. We'd always beg, “can we move the car?” Because we'd have to move the cars around to practice baseball and stuff.
Wally Doi had this huge white Cadillac. All the business owners eventually accumulated Cadillacs. That was their goal. That means that as an entrepreneur, you made it, I guess. And of course, they all had big vans and pickups in the back that were used for deliveries and bringing stuff in. But there was this big white Cadillac, probably around ‘62 or so, had these big white fins on the back and all that. Well, behind the Aloha Cafe building there was a series of garages that were made out of cinder blocks and the Dois had two of them. One had a boat in it, a boat on a trailer and then one is where they kept the Cadillac. Robin Doi, after a practice one day, kept saying, “Come on, come on, Dad, let me pull the car back into the garage!” And so one day his dad finally relented and said, “Okay, here's the keys. Just pull it in nice and smooth, put it in there and close the door, we'll go have a shake at the counter.” So we're all standing—he was so excited because he finally got to try driving it. So he gets in the thing and he starts pulling into the cinder block garage and all of a sudden he hits the gas full on instead of the brake and there was this big screeching sound and the Cadillac went right into the back cinder block wall of the garage and just demolished the whole front of the car plus the back of a garage. [laughs] I just remember staying there in complete silence because Wally Doi was one fierce guy and I just thought, oh my God, Robin Doi is gonna like be tortured. He's gonna kill him right now. He was so upset. He just didn't say a word. He just like turned around and walked away and went inside. Which made it even worse because we're all standing out there shaking, wondering what to do. Do we still get our shake? Can we still go in and have our shake? Which we did and we were afraid to go inside. I'm sure whatever happened after, he caught an earful for whatever happened and eventually it all got fixed back up and so on."
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"When my father—when they bought the house in Rose Park—he was always mad about this for his whole life—he had to go door to door with a clipboard and ask for permission to buy the house from, I don’t know, like a two square block area.Most people said yes, but there were a few who wouldn’t sign it and said no. And man, did he remember those people for the rest of his life."
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]]>Description from Vimeo: "Salt Lake City, Utah. It’s Wednesday morning at the Bonwood bowling alley and the senior bowlers file into their weekly ritual. Strikes, cheers, and candy circle the lanes. The Salt Lake Nisei show how youthful growing old can be. Their spirit and stories weave a history - then and now - of the Japanese-American community in Salt Lake City. A heartwarming portrait of age, friendship, and perseverance."
]]>Transcript: "Growing up, I didn't realize how grateful I am that I can go to the temple where my grandparents got married. It was somewhere where they felt safe to practice their religion when it didn't feel super safe 20 years before when they were in camp. But it’s also cool that they did have like a temple in Topaz and then they came here and they had their temple here. I think all of those connections and being able to be involved with the Topaz incarceration site and practice my religion—it just means a lot. I tie that to J-Town as well."
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