Oral History Program Dayana Estrada Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 29 January 2015 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Dayana Estrada Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 29 January 2015 Copyright © 2015 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description Immigrants at the Crossroads - Ogden City is a project to collect oral histories, photographs and artifacts related to the immigrant populations that helped shape the cultural and economic climate of Ogden. This project will expand the contributions made by Ogden’s immigrant populations: the Dutch, Italian and Greek immigrants who came to work on the railroad and the Japanese who arrived after World War II from the West Coast and from internment camps. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Estrada, Dayana, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 29 January 2015, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. 1 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Dayana Estrada. It was conducted January 29, 2015 and concerns her mother, Helen, a first generation Japanese American from California. Helen spent time in a Japanese internment camp before coming to Ogden and starting a business on 25th Street. Dayana talks about her time growing up on 25th Street. The interviewer is Lorrie Rands. LR: It’s January 29, 2015, on the telephone with Dayana Estrada who lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, talking about her memories of Ogden and living on 25th Street and also her mother and father. So Dayana I know I’ve said thank you, but I’ll say it again for the record. Thank you for your time let’s just go ahead and start with my first question. When and where were you born? DE: I was born at St. Benedict’s Hospital in Ogden in 1948. LR: Okay and when and where was your mother born? DE: My mom was born in a little town called Rego, California about 10 miles out of Sacramento. She was born in March of 1912. LR: Were her parents from Japan? DE: Yes. LR: Do you by chance know where they came from? DE: They were from Hiroshima. LR: What was your mother’s name? 2 DE: My mother’s name was Helen. Actually the Japanese name was Hadawai Okomoto. LR: When did your mother come to Ogden and what brought her here? DE: She came to Ogden after internment and she was one of the ones that was released relatively early from Tule Lake Internment Camp in California. She came to Ogden in 1943 and I don’t know why Ogden. LR: Did she have to come further inland, she couldn’t stay in California? DE: I’m not sure what the requirement was. It had to be, I’m sure it was at least 200 miles off, but I’m not sure if it was more. LR: Okay and did she come alone? DE: She came with my half-sister and half-brother. Children she had with Jack. LR: How did your parents meet? DE: My mom and her sister Ugi had a business on 25th street called George’s Café. My dad had already owned the Beehive Club. I’m not sure if Poncho’s was open at the time, but he had the Beehive Club which was upstairs. LR: What was your father’s name? DE: Ray Estrada. LR: And was he an Ogden native? DE: No, he was born in Mexico. LR: So what brought your father to Ogden? DE: I don’t know. My parents divorced when I was very young. So I wasn’t close to my father’s family at all. 3 LR: So they met because of mutual businesses on 25th Street? DE: Yes. LR: Let’s see, so did you live on 25th Street? DE: Yes, for most of my life, up until I was about 19. LR: Did you live in their business or above their business? DE: Upstairs, when I was very young we lived upstairs. By then the Beehive Club had closed, my parents were divorced and we lived upstairs from Poncho’s. Then my mom later had a hotel that she leased from the Papasses. Then we lived there at the Pacific Hotel. LR: The Pacific Hotel is the hotel she leased? DE: Yes that was at 148 25th Street, that was on the 100 block. So it was 148 and a ½ is what it was. LR: I’m trying to get a visual picture and I’m having a hard time. DE: Well the building’s torn down now. LR: Oh that’s why I can’t, that makes more sense now. So your parents owned and operated Poncho’s. Did they operate it together or was it just your dad’s? DE: You know prior to the divorce I’m not really sure, but my mom continued to run the business after my dad left. He went to prison. One of the books says he went to the Utah State Prison, but he didn’t. He went to Federal Prison for tax evasion because that’s what they did back in the day when they wanted you to be gone. 4 LR: Right, yes I’ve heard a lot of stories about how that’s how they got, what was her name? Rose… DE: Oh yes, and see Rose was friends with my mom and dad. LR: This is really cool. So let’s go back to when you were younger growing up on that street. What are some of your memories of growing up on 25th Street? DE: Well when I was very young the Buddhist Church was just right around the corner on Lincoln between 24th and 25th. There were so many Japanese businesses there then that that’s kind of, that was my center, growing up with the kids of the families who had businesses there then. The Weaklys had the Porter’s and Waiter’s Club across the street on the 100 block. So I would go over there sometimes too. Bernadette was a little bit older than me, but I spent some time over there at Annabelle’s, and they lived upstairs in the Porter’s and Waiter’s. I kind of cruised around the whole neighborhood when I was little, you can imagine that’s where you learned how to skate and ride your bike and stuff. It was a pretty vibrant business, mixed business area, community. LR: Right, that’s true. So you remember a lot about the Buddhist Church or the temple, the Buddhist Temple there. Who were some of your friends? Were they all Japanese? DE: Yeah well pretty much, in fact I wrote a list of the businesses and the names I could remember. They were like, well I’m sure you’ve spoken with Linda Oda. 5 LR: We haven’t been able to talk with her yet. DE: Oh okay. Her maiden name is Enowe. So the Enowes used to have a market there and there were the Nakatani’s, Kinamoto’s, my uncle Jimmy, Sakarada’s was a fish market over on 24th. The Kuboto’s had a place called the Grant Tap on 24th and Grant. Later on they had a restaurant on Grant. Of courses Star Noodle and those were the ones I could remember off hand. LR: That’s awesome. So did you have any problem with discrimination within the Japanese community because you were of a mixed race? DE: No, although I think that probably neither of my families were excited about my mom and my dad because I’m the first on my mom’s side and the first mixed on my dad’s side. But no I didn’t ever feel that and I didn’t ever really feel it growing up. Grant School was the elementary school in that area then and that was a pretty mixed elementary school. So I didn’t in my early years. LR: Did that change as you got older? DE: Well as I got older and even in junior high school it was mixed. I went to Central and went to Ogden High. So those were all really mixed schools. I didn’t really feel it so much or observe it. I mean I think I had one incident, but that was about the only thing. I mean we were pretty mixed. I think I was very fortunate giving the homogenous nature of Utah that I didn’t. LR: One of the questions I was curious about was what were some of your memories of growing up in such an ethnically diverse neighborhood? 6 DE: I thought it was great. Like I said I kind of wandered around in groups and even religions, I mean I was brought up and raised Buddhist, but I remember going to the Catholic Church. Of course my dad’s family was Catholic, and then I think I went, my black girlfriend Carolyn Martin, I went to church with her one time. I think they were Baptist, I’m not really sure. It was such a contrast from what my experience was, but you know I just kind of moved around. LR: I can imagine. So when the Buddhist Temple moved were you out of the neighborhood by then? DE: No, I was still living there. I moved from the street and about let me think about this a minute, this was 1968. LR: Okay, where did you go after you moved? DE: Oh I just moved into a little apartment within Ogden. I stayed in Ogden. In fact I stayed in Ogden until 2011, that’s when I moved. Although my mom and I, we moved to California for not even a year after elementary school, between elementary and junior high school. It seems like we left in about, it must have been about May or June but we were back in Ogden by the following January. LR: Do you know why you moved? DE: I’m not really sure. We moved to southern California which is where my half-brother was and I’m not really sure why we did that. LR: All right, did you, how do I word this question? Your mother’s Japanese, your father’s Mexican, did you feel kind of a battle between which side do I 7 follow? It seems like you went more on your mother’s side, but did you ever feel like which way do I go? DE: Yes, especially when I was a teenager. Now it’s like I wasn’t really sure, I mean I hung around some bunch of Mexican kids and I just kind of floated by I guess. I have good friends of all kinds, just every kind of background. LR: I think that’s great. I almost envy your upbringing because it was so almost open. DE: Well part of that has to do with my mom. My mom was a pretty liberated, independent woman and that’s what she wanted me to be. LR: I can appreciate that. I think every mom wants that for their… DE: She had me when she was a little older. So I think that factored in to how she raised me also. LR: Right and I can understand that. So what do you remember the most about your dad’s bar, Poncho’s? DE: Well when I was very little it just seemed like, well the whole street, it seemed like there were a lot of people around all the time. I think it was probably, well it was post war and in fact during the Korean conflict and there was still a lot of soldiers that were being moved around. I think probably a lot on the train so I just remember a lot of people being around and it seemed like it was busy. Weekends at Poncho’s could get pretty crazy. We stayed open until about 1, 2 o’clock in the morning. So people would come and see after the bar was closed. I remember even preparing, my mom preparing a large 8 numbers of take out orders for some of the hospital workers. They’d come and get take out orders. So it was interesting and I helped in the café. I helped roast and cut up food for preparation and wait on tables and fill dispensers, napkin dispensers and salt and pepper shakers and stuff, clean up tables, do the dishes, probably at least by when I was in junior high school. LR: I was talking with a gentleman who remembers taking his family member who was visiting and they went to Poncho’s and he swore he’d never go back. It scared him so much, that it was just a hard place. DE: Well there was one murder when we had it. Yes the Mexicans especially, I remember when the migrant workers came into town in the summers and yes there’d be big fights between the local Mexicans and the migrant Mexicans. They’d be drinking and yes it got pretty wild. LR: Makes me wonder. I interviewed what’s his name? The owner of the Kokomo. DE: Oh Ed Simone. LR: Yes and he, I mean you guys were kind of close right? The buildings were kind of close? DE: Right across the street. I was on the corner at Poncho’s and across the street when we had the upholstery shop. LR: So you were on the opposite street of Kokomo? DE: Yeah it was Cut Rate Upholstery and then it was 25th Street Upholstery. LR: So you were on the south side? 9 DE: Olive Dahlia now. Yes that was our building. LR: So was it just the lower half of the street that was segregated or was it the entire street? DE: No just the lower part, just the 100 block. LR: That’s interesting. I knew it was segregated, but I kind of thought the entire street was. DE: No it was just the 100 block. LR: Okay so that’s one of the reasons why you could just walk right down to Porter’s and Waiter’s and not even think about it. DE: Yes I didn’t have any problems walking on that street at any time. LR: So no one bugged you for being on that side? DE: No. LR: On the 100 block down there? Wow… DE: Well because I had friends that lived there. LR: Right well I’m learning something. I didn’t know that. I thought it was the entire street that was segregated. This is really fun. DE: Well, by the time I had left there the street had transitioned from kind of a bustling street; there’s always been a lot of bars on 25th street, restaurants and other kinds of businesses, to where it was, it had deteriorated a lot. There was just a lot of alcoholics and you know those kinds of people that my mom really kind of enabled because she would help get them through their welfare checks, their social security, their disability checks, whatever. She would kind of hold onto their money, make sure they had meal tickets 10 so they could eat. Kind of just divvy out their cash so they wouldn’t be broke the day after payday. LR: Oh wow that’s really kind. So would she do that with anyone she could or did she have just certain people? DE: Well I don’t really know. I just remember the same guys always, but she kind of made sure they had a place to stay because they usually were in one or whatever hotels on the street. So she’d make sure that they had a place to stay and had food. LR: Now that was just the nature, your mother’s nature to be that kind? DE: Yes. LR: Okay, was that something your father would’ve done or it was just something, it was your mom? DE: I don’t think my dad would’ve done that, no. LR: That speaks a lot about your mom. About her nature, I like that. What do you think of the street today? DE: Oh I think it’s great. Well I was involved in the Historic 25th Street Business Association when it first formed. With Danika Patone and Dean Perkins and George Whiting was the city rep then, Lucia Browning. We started the organization to try and get cleaned up. Dean had bought Nicholas’ building and Danika had also. Some of the businesses were just kind of getting started down there. We really wanted to get it cleaned up so that the way it is now could happen. 11 LR: Right, so did you own a business on 25th Street or did you just like the idea of it being preserved? DE: No I owned a business. My mom and I, well one of mom’s businesses was Cut Rate Upholstery; she opened that on the 100 block. Then there was a fire there in Hotel Pacific so she moved the business into 215 and that was the old 7-Up bottling. So she moved the business up there and then I went to work with her there in about, I think about ‘74, something like that. My mom passed in ‘82 and I changed the name to 25th Street Upholstery. LR: That’s what you were talking about, it makes more sense now. DE: So we ran that until, it must have been in about 1992 or 1993, something like that. LR: So you really saw firsthand the street go downhill. DE: Oh yes. LR: Did your business suffer at all from that? DE: Not really, because my mom had run so many businesses and she had a good reputation, although in the upholstery business it was very up and down. It could be seasonal and of course when like in ‘82 when gas was high, interest was high and all of that; in fact even before that, but when money got tight people don’t get their furniture upholstered. LR: That’s true. So the fire at the Hotel Pacific, do you remember what year that was? DE: That was, I believe in ‘68. LR: Did it destroy the hotel? 12 DE: It did. LR: Do you by chance remember the Reed Hotel fire? DE: I do. We had that then. LR: What do you remember about that? DE: I remember that someone who was not a tenant started a fire, I believe yes. Then I remember being sued over that because someone lost their life in that fire. LR: Why were you sued? DE: Because we were the lease holders. We didn’t own the building, but we owned the business. LR: So your business was at the Reed Hotel? DE: Yes, that was one of the hotels we owned. LR: I didn’t know that. So you owned the original upholstery business with your mom and you turned it into 25th Street Upholstery and then you had other businesses along with that? DE: The Reed Hotel. LR: So the barber shop underneath that, was it… DE: Dave’s. LR: Yes Dave’s barber shop. DE: Alki uh huh. LR: I know we were able to talk to him. This is fascinating, so you obviously weren’t at the hotel when it was on fire because that was in the evening. DE: Well that and I didn’t live there by then. 13 LR: Okay you had moved? DE: I only lived, I only personally lived at Poncho’s and Pacific. Then when my mom passed I moved upstairs from 25th, from Cut Rate Upholstery at 215. LR: So what happened with the lawsuit? DE: They sued the wrong person. They sued my mom. LR: Right and is it something you can talk about? DE: I don’t really know that much about it. I remember that my mom was sued and she wasn’t the person that was on the business license or the lease agreement on the hotel. LR: She just owned the property? DE: No she didn’t own the property, Francis Nicholas owned the property. LR: She was leasing it, you said that. DE: Yeah. The only property that we actually owned and purchased was 215. She leased the Poncho’s building from Richard Nicholas. The Reed Hotel building was owned by Francis. The Pacific Hotel building was owned by the Papasses. LR: I’m following you now, I’m not confused anymore. Do you have any other memories that you want to share? DE: It was a long process to get the city to pay attention to the needs of the businesses on 25th Street. It was kind of fits and starts because there was, I remember money available to redo the facades and that was great, that was a good start. Then it kind of just ebbed and flowed. I only left in 2011 so it was good that to see that things were starting to roll again. I get up to 14 Ogden pretty regularly. I went a couple of times last summer, but I feel it still seems like such a slow process. I always kind of felt like Salt Lake City was the capital so big focus there and Ogden always seemed like the hamburger, the hamburger joint. Although I love it, and I feel fortunate having been born and raised there and it will always be my home. It’s really exciting to see the progress they’ve made on 25th Street. I worry now about Washington Boulevard. It’s good to see what’s happening on the 24th Street area, 23rd, some of the other places and even on south Washington, it’s like hmm... LR: No I know what you mean. It’s quite a bit different now than it was so I can understand that. DE: Are you from Ogden? Where are you from? LR: I’m from Salt Lake. DE: From Salt Lake? Okay. LR: Right, we never came to Ogden, and I haven’t known Ogden till I went back to school. Now I’m becoming very familiar with it and I love its history so this is a lot of fun for me. Let me ask you this final question and it’s the question I’ve been asking everyone I’ve interviewed for this project. That is, what do you think your mother’s legacy is? DE: Well for people who are still around and knew her those impressions and memories will maybe fade away about her, I just think that’s kind of the nature of things. For me, I feel fortunate to have been raised by such a person. The consensus is among people who knew her and family, they 15 have the same feeling about her. She was kind of the black sheep of her family. LR: Do you know why she was the black sheep? DE: Well she was a nisei that was a first generation Japanese that were in America. They were the first born here. The isseis are the ones who immigrated and the niseis were the first ones born here. They were still pretty tied to old ways. Her first marriage was arranged so considering those times and how she managed to be a single parent and an entrepreneur mostly on her own was kind of different for her time. She was kind of ahead of her time. LR: It almost sounds like her life experiences made her who she was and she used that as the avenue to pull herself up. DE: Yes, absolutely. She was an independent woman in her thinking too. LR: Sounds like it, wow. DE: Yes I remember her talking about how like folks used to have to sit, go to the back of the bus and stuff and I remember her saying, “I’ll go sit in the back of the bus.” I mean she may have and I know she did experience a lot of prejudice and back lash after the war. A whole lot of Japanese people did, so she pretty much always sympathized with those who were unfairly treated and were the underdogs. That might just be kind of because she was raised Buddhist too, I don’t know it’s hard to say, but yes she had kind of a difficult life. She used to trudge vegetables from California to Lake Tahoe, and she always felt like she could compete with 16 her older brothers and stuff. So I’m not sure about her legacy in terms of how anyone else, I know how my daughter feels about her, but then my grandchildren didn’t know her. So there’s nothing really concrete, that’s how it is with most of us. LR: Right well I think now with this there is something concrete. People will remember or can look at this and see your mother, get an idea of what type of woman she was. So I’m really grateful that you took the time to talk to me. DE: Well I appreciate all you’re doing about the history and of the community and 25th Street specifically; that was my old stomping grounds. I feel fortunate to have lived there because as I grew up, I’d go to the library, it was within walking distance. It was right there by the municipal building and four theatres right there close by so I saw probably every movie that ever came through. For me it was a great place to be raised and I know that for some people who weren’t as familiar or integrated into that particular neighborhood it may seem like, wow wasn’t that kind of scary? You know as a child you just, your neighborhood is your neighborhood and that’s where you go out and play and meet your friends, hang out, so that’s kind of how I viewed it. I felt bad when it went through its tough times. I mean it was pretty down on its luck for a while. I’m just really glad that things are happening down there and it’s a fun place to go. LR: I agree, my daughter calls it her Outdoor Mall, she loves to go there. DE: Well that’s good. 17 LR: Yes and I was kind of surprised when she did. She thinks it’s really a cool place and she’s a teenager so if a teenager enjoys going there that means something good. DE: Yes it does. If there’s anything else I can help you with or, how many people are working on this project with you? LR: I personally am in charge of all the oral histories, but anyone within the department can actually do an oral history. It’s just something that I’ve been put in charge of because I really love oral histories. So I have a student worker who’s helping me collect all of these. We haven’t gotten as much of a response for the immigrant stories as we did for the 25th Street project. We interviewed almost 60 people for the 25th Street project and that was a lot of fun. For this one I think we’ve done about 15. DE: Well, my impression is generally, I look at it as the western migration of Asians into the country that came on through California and the west coast and the eastern migration of everybody else, the Italians, the Greeks, Irish, Eastern Europeans, whoever else that came to the country by the east coast. I think that whichever were the newest immigrants ended up coming and ending up doing the hardest jobs, the most dangerous jobs. That and of course the railroad brought jobs to a lot of immigrants and up in Iron County, the mining and all of that stuff. So I think the communities kind of grew up around those situations. In terms of any younger or later immigration I don’t know how that happened. I think that usually it’s work and the good part of Ogden and the whole Wasatch Front area kind of is 18 with Hill Air Force Base, that’s where my aunt retired from and DDO and IRS, those government jobs. They kind of seem to be the biggest employers and the businesses that kind of grow up around, supporting those. LR: I know but before that, before the military and the government jobs it was mostly these little businesses like your parents owned that kind of made Ogden thrive. DE: Oh yes. LR: So I like hearing the stories of how they stayed in business and what they did. It’s a lot of fun. DE: A lot of them back in the day, well maybe even still are family owned businesses. LR: Right I think that’s the best part about it. When they’re passed on a family can maintain it, which it sounds like that’s what your mom did, pass it on to you. DE: You know if I’d had my druthers I would probably have rather continued, but it was more of personal family issues that got in the way of that. So I went through a real tough time where I had to make a decision about how my life was tied to that location or not and it was a difficult one. LR: Well I can imagine. DE: Yes, but it’s been okay. It’s been okay to have made the move and I’m glad that others have filled in the slots and seem to be thriving down there. So it’s great. 19 LR: That’s great. I agree, it’s great. It’s a great place to be. DE: Yes it is. LR: I enjoy it a lot. Well Dayana I’m so grateful for your time. Unless you had something else you’d like to add? DE: Not that I can think of. I had a pretty much overall good experience with my life on 25th street. Course it wasn’t all roses, but for the most part I only have good memories. LR: That’s great, I’m glad. Thank you so much for talking with me today.