Hatsuro
Aizawa
Former Japantown Resident
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On Growing
up in Japantown
In Japanese,
we called it Nihonjimachi. I was born on Post Street between Laguna
and Buchanan. Until I was 17, we lived on a house right on the corner
of Post and Buchanan. In those days, it seemed like there was a
barrier around the area. We had our own Japanese school, which we
attended every day after public school. We had our hamburger stands,
soda fountains, plus the different Japanese sweet shops and all
the different restaurants. We had our own ethnic grocery stores
that you were able to buy anything that you needed.
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On His Father's
Bookstore
He had a bookstore
that sold nothing but Japanese books. Everybody gathered there,
playing cards or reading the books. We were always poor because
nobody bought any books. They just stood there and read the books
and went home. I didn't work in the store as such but I got paid
thirty-five cents a month to deliver books. My father used to stay
late. He would close the store at 11 o'clock at night and then he
would come upstairs. We would wait for him to finish and then we
would go out with him to eat. The war was economically devastating
for us. We had to shut down the store. I remember cleaning up all
those books and getting ready for evacuation. We could only take
what we could carry.
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On Living
in the Internment Camps
Physically we
were 100% Japanese but we are 100% American in our hearts. It's
not that I want to wave the flag but we were born and raised here
in the American system. It was a crushing blow that the government
would say, "You're Japanese. You've got to get out of here."
There were about 10,000 Japanese or Japanese Americans in our first
camp. We were there for about 6 months and then we were assigned
to Topaz camp. It was just a desert and they put up barracks. We
had to start from scratch. It was a difficult period in our lives
although I didn't stay very long. I was fortunate enough to get
a scholarship from a church to go to college, so I left Topaz within
three months. I was one of the few fortunate ones.
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On Returning
to San Francisco after the War
We always felt
that we had to come back to San Francisco. This was our home, regardless
of how we had been treated. Everything I remembered about San Francisco
was very dear to me. After the war, we were here about four or five
years before we were able to come back to our community in the heart
of J-town. Luckily, a Japanese company decided that they were going
to come in and help us build this community center that helped J-town
get off the ground. But it took quite a while. It was just something
that we all worked at and strived for.
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click for larger
image
Photo Credit:
KQED
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