Gambling at Don's Pool Hall

Transcript:

Craig Nagasawa: "It says the Rojin Club or Don's Pool Hall. Don's Pool Hall was what it was. On the ground floor there was a big pool hall. It hardly seemed like anybody was ever in there and what was really going on was there was this I don't know what Rojin means, but there was this club and basically there was gambling going on. So in the back, the pool hall was sort of like the front and in the back—I guess it was legal, but they were probably secretly exchanging money. There was always some strange either mahjong or poker going on back there and you would never know unless you could enter from the back. So as kids, we used to go running through there and people would scream at us, “What are you doing in here?” And so on."

Audio

Images

Police Nab 11 in Gambling Raid (1947)
Police Nab 11 in Gambling Raid (1947) Creator: Salt Lake Telegram

Location

110 W. 1st So.

Metadata

Craig Nagasawa, “Gambling at Don's Pool Hall,” Utah Japantown Stories, accessed November 3, 2026, https://utahjapantownstories.com/items/show/18.