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Family's hotel clientele, transients traveling by rail

I think it was right off the railroad, and the railroad used to be one of the busiest things in Spokane, railroad. And it provided people going through, they were called transients. But those transients also had a few dollars in their pockets. They… I remember when we lived in the small house, these transients would come by and say, knock on the door and says, “Can I chop wood for you or clean your yard for a meal?” And these were those transients. I think for the most part, they were trustworthy and loyal. That type of society then, of course, the doors were always unlocked in that period, we went to sleep without locking the door, and it was that, that time of, the period that time that we felt reasonably safe.


railroads Spokane United States Washington

Date: March 15 & 16, 2006

Location: Washington, US

Interviewer: Megan Asaka

Contributed by: Denshō: The Japanese American Legacy Project.

Interviewee Bio

Nisei male. Born 1923 in Spokane, Washington. Spent childhood in downtown Spokane where parents ran the World Hotel. Father also worked as a mail handler for the Great Northern Railroad. Attended Lewis and Clark High School and Washington State University. During the war remembers seeing train cars pass through Spokane with Japanese Americans headed to Heart Mountain incarceration camp, Wyoming. Drafted into the army in 1944 and served at the Military Intelligence Service Language School in Fort Snelling, Minnesota and Presidio, California. After World War II, worked as a chick sexer in upstate New York and surrounding region for thirty years. Returned to Spokane in the mid-1970s and pursued a career in real estate. Currently lives with wife, Susie, in Spokane and is an active fly fisherman. (March 16, 2006 )

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