Oral History Program Joseph T. Liu Interviewed by Woodrow Johnson 31 July 2013 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Joseph T. Liu Interviewed by Woodrow Johnson 31 July 2013 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library 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 Business at the Crossroads - Ogden City is a project to collect oral histories related to changes in the Ogden business district since World War II. From the 1870s to World War II, Ogden was a major railroad town, with nine rail systems. With both east-west and north-south rail lines, business and commercial houses flourished as Ogden became a shipping and commerce hub. After World War II, the railroad business declined. Some government agencies and businesses related to the defense industry continued to gravitate to Ogden after the war—including the Internal Revenue Regional Center, the Marquardt Corporation, Boeing Corporation, Volvo-White Truck Corporation, Morton-Thiokol, and several other smaller operations. However, the economy became more service oriented, with small businesses developing that appealed to changing demographics, including the growing Hispanic population. ____________________________________ 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: Liu, Joseph, an oral history by Woodrow Johnson, 31 July 2013, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Joseph T. Liu July 31, 2013 Joseph T. Liu in China Temple ca. 1950 Chinese Identification Card of Joseph Liu’s Father, Sammy Liu February 18,1942 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Joe Liu. The interview was conducted on July 31, 2013, by Woodrow Johnson. Joe discusses memories of 25th Street and the China Temple. WJ: I’m Woodrow Johnson and today is July 31, 2013. We are here with Joe Liu and his wife Pat Liu discussing memories of 25th Street and, in particular, the China Temple. Last time we were here we talked a little bit about your father and how he came to Salt Lake and eventually to Ogden to start the restaurant. Would you like to cover that for us again? JL: Sure. My dad and his father both emigrated from China. My father was about 15 years old so that would have to be in the 1920’s. They were trained in cooking in China. They ended up in Wyoming and they had a job with the oil and gas companies to feed the crews. They basically were the chefs for the line crews up in Wyoming. After working with them for a while I think they started a restaurant in Cheyenne, Wyoming. They moved to Salt Lake City, Utah and started a restaurant during the war years. Being of the Chinese race, you had to carry an ID card to prove that you were not Japanese so you didn’t end up in an internment camp somewhere. He had to carry an actual card with him that said he was of the Chinese race. That was during the war years. After the war, around 1949, the Pagoda restaurant was started at 112 25th Street. That was just up from Wall Avenue and it was on the north side of the street and their sign was an actual Chinese pagoda. I can’t find any pictures of it 1 except for the one in the Club two-bit street cafe that used to be the Club Tavern. It’s a night shot of the cafe. That’s the only one I’ve ever seen so far. Anyway, the first name was the Pagoda. They found out that there was another restaurant somewhere near that was also called the Pagoda, so they had to change the name to The China Temple Café. It was the China Temple Café from the 1950’s until 1976. WJ: Your dad was the cook there for the entire time? JL: Yes. He ran the kitchen all the time it was there; he was more or less the guy in charge of the kitchen. He taught everybody how to cook and he probably influenced the majority of the Chinese restaurants in the 1950’s and 1960’s. There were Liu’s all the way from Provo to Logan. Every one of those restaurants, some of their cooks started in the China Temple and that’s where they learned their trade. WJ Explain your childhood, because I know you weren’t always there at the China Temple. JL: I was born in 1947 and my father and mother were never married. She was a waitress and my dad was a cook. They would have been in the Salt Lake area because I was born in Murray, Utah. My mom was a young alcoholic that liked to party and raise hell. She was to marry another person, not my father, that was a war veteran from World War II and because the war years were so recent and because of his dislike for Orientals, me being mixed blood, he had no desire to have any part of me whatsoever. My mom could not marry him unless she gave me up and I guess that’s what happened. I ended up in the system in either 2 foster care or an orphanage. From one to five I have no memories of how I was brought up. When I was about five or six, I was raised in Ogden by a Chinese family that was one of my dad’s partners. He ran the dining room part and my dad ran the kitchen. The guy, Larry Wong, was his partner and had four boys of his own, so my dad, Sammy, got a hold of me after the first five years and got legal custody of me. I was given guardianship to Larry Wong to take care of me along with his four boys. I was raised with five boys. It’s kind of interesting because I do speak a little Chinese and I do understand a little Chinese—Utah Chinese is what I call it because it’s so different from the different dialects in different parts of the China, just like a southern drawl or accents are so different. I do speak a little bit of Chinese and I do understand it because I was raised in a Chinese family. I don’t have the opportunity to speak Chinese on a lot of occasions now, but when I get to the San Francisco area I can still understand what is going on. It was kind of interesting to be raised like that, being of mixed race and also without a mom and dad—the restaurant was our life. That’s where I spent most of my time. WJ: When did you start at the restaurant? JL: We were always at the restaurant for whatever reason, but I didn’t really start to understand the working of the restaurant until I was about 14. I started as a busboy at another Chinese restaurant, not my dad’s. It was the old Canton Café on Washington Boulevard. That’s where I started to work and my dad called me after about a year of working up there to come down and work with him. That’s when I started washing dishes and learning the trade of being a cook. From 15 to 3 17 I trained on the American side cooking the meat and eggs because it was easier. I didn’t want to learn the Chinese side because I was lazy, so I learned on the American side because it was the easier of the two. WJ: So at that restaurant there was American food and Chinese food? JL: Right. Cantonese cooking is basically the type of cooking that was there in addition to the American side. They were open for 24 hours a day 7 days a week. I remember dad working 16 to 18 hours a day like it was nothing. The only time they had vacation or closed was when they did maintenance or cleaned the restaurant. During the summer time they would usually shut down for a couple of weeks and get everything cleaned up and painted or repaired. That was their vacation. Any other time they were open. WJ: What did you do after 17? JL: I graduated in 1965 from Ogden High School. In January of 1966 I joined the Marine Corps. I was in the Marine Corps for three and a half years. When I came back I had no desire whatsoever to work in the restaurant because of the long hours and it was hot, nasty work. So, I became a policeman. I started in Ogden City in 1969 and then went to Roy in 1971 and retired from the police department in Roy as the Assistant Chief in 1993. That’s quite a different occupation. WJ: When you were in the military, there are rumors about 25th Street being known throughout the world. I’m curious if while you were in the military and perhaps even in Vietnam if you ran into anybody or heard any stories about 25th Street. 4 JL: I did because one of my best friends, Roger Holstein, his father was an Ogden City policeman for 37 years. He was in the Navy as a Seabee and I was in the Marine Corps with the tanks. There was one more young man by the name of Rounkles who was in the Army. We were all living one block apart and we had seen each other over there and we’d talk about home. It was kind of interesting because we used to have the sea rations and the packages that came from the defense depot in Ogden. Every time I’d eat a meal I’d see my hometown, “Ogden, Utah,” printed on the box. WJ: Did that make it hard? JL: It did make me homesick. WJ: Tell us about some of the memories from China Temple or 25th Street in general. JL: China Temple was open 24 hours a day so the variety of people that came in there ranging from regulars from the railroad, in fact when the railroad had its boom days as the main hub in Ogden, every time an Amtrak train would come over you could see people stand out front of the restaurant all the way down to Wall Avenue waiting to get in. We only had a 75 person maximum capacity inside, but they would wait. We would feed a bunch of people coming off the trains. That was our business from the trains. When the trains weren’t coming in you had power crews, gas crews and line crews that would come in all hours of the day or night. When you’d have emergencies coming in, or you had a lot of people that would come in after the bars closed, that was the interesting crowd. The drunks would come in and a time or two I had to break up fights and things 5 inside the restaurant, not only with guys, but also girls. It was interesting because you could see every walk of life come through there. As a kid, it was kind of unique because of the reputation that Ogden had at that time for the red light district and all the bars and being the rough part of town. When you took advantage of it as a kid you just never knew the things you could find and do. When I was about 10 or 12 I had a scam going to where I would tell the servicemen where the hookers were and what hotel room to go to. I had no idea where they were, but I would just give them a room number and they would go ahead and knock on the door. It would cost them a buck, of course. That was a pretty good gig, but after a while the trains died and so did my business. You‘d try rolling drunks when they were passed out on the street and go through their pockets. You’d never know what you’d find in there, but I quit doing that too. Booze was always an issue to where I didn’t have any trouble getting booze because you had the bar next door run by the Pappas’ and the old system of the state liquor store. The Utah laws were so unique that you had the little ticket to write the number of what booze you wanted and you’d take it up to the window and they’d give you the booze. My dad knew everybody that worked at the liquor store because they came down to the restaurant and my dad would send me up to get whatever booze he wanted. He was a drinker too, so I guess both parents were alcoholics. He’d have three meals a day and he’d have an ounce of booze each time he sat down to eat. For me, I just added my numbers to his numbers and we just had booze all the time. Needless to say, I drank quite 6 a bit, but, then when your liquor stores closed, you could always go to a cab driver. They used to bootleg out of the back of their cabs all the time. Using my ingenuity again, I would threaten to turn them into the police if they didn’t sell me the booze, so that worked too. Needless to say, my childhood was wide-eyed and open and drinking at a young age and I fit right in the Marine Corps I guess. Then becoming a policeman, people couldn’t believe it. WJ: Policing the same area that you were exploiting a couple of years earlier. JL: It was kind of interesting when I first started Ogden City as a patrolman, I would love to work the street because everybody knew me and it was easier for me because I knew everybody. Then, of course, I’d go into China Temple and they’d always make sure I had enough to eat, coffee or whatever, and all the guys that worked with me had to come with me just because Dad owned the place. There was always something free to eat and it was kind of nice. WJ: You mentioned earlier that red light district, Ogden being known for that. You would have been a young kid at the time, but do you have any memories of that? JL: Well, yeah, Dad, he used to use the electric alley as our main to get to the back of the China Temple to park our cars when we worked, and Dad used to take me home that way too. He would tell me where the hookers were and what to look for. The old hotels, the Marion Hotel and down to the end of the second floor and he would point them out to me and I never did ask him how he knew, but there was prostitution there, I’m sure there was. As far as the stories about the tunnels and about all this other stuff, I’ve never seen the tunnels. I’ve seen the basement 7 and the storage areas of the China Temple, which is now the Gift House, but I have never heard about the underground city more or less, so I’ve never seen it. WJ: While you were at the China Temple, it was during the time of a lot of racial movements in America, and Ogden was at one point segregated. Do you have any stories about segregation or anything like that? JL: As far as segregation goes in Ogden, we had an unwritten rule that colored folk would stay on the south side of the street and the others were on the north side of the street. For years, the China Temple did not serve colored people. During the Civil Rights movement in the 1960’s, of course, there was, I graduated in 1965 and so we started to get agitation from the coloreds by shooting out the windows of our restaurant with .22’s. There were about three or four times that I remember having windows shot out from across the street. After 1965, probably right at 1965, after I graduated, during that period of time, we did start to serve the colored people. Chinese restaurants and Chinese food specifically is totally different from what they were used to eating, and everybody came down there to eat Chinese food or Japanese food or even southern fried chicken across the street. They had their own restaurant and their own bar and Annabelle had her own set up down there. In fact, she had all the best music and all the best jazz players and things and it was definitely segregated, but our population in Ogden as far as the colored people were concerned was that they had very few. We only had like maybe a dozen out of 500 kids in my class at Ogden High School. Then, everybody realized that from probably 24th Street to 30th Street and from Wall to Washington was the segregated area. That’s where the blacks usually 8 had all their housing and everything else, but there was definitely an area that was segregated. I don’t know if it was intentional, because all your train folks were porters and waiters basically and that’s where Annabelle got her name from. They were all from the trains. WJ: Did you ever feel any type of racial discrimination being half Chinese and half white American? JL: Yeah I did. In schools we would be called names as such, and when I was real young they would have the old, “ching chong Chinaman,” song going all the time and teasing. I wasn’t a real big kid at that time, I didn’t grow until after I went into the Marine Corps I think, but I experienced it. There was one gal I was trying to date when I was in high school that her father just came right out and said it, “Don’t have anything to do with my daughter, you’re Chinese and we don’t want no part of you.” Yet, I’ve had other people that loved it, they could care less so I’ve seen both sides of the coin. Some of my best friends would just go out of the way for me, they were just like secondary parents to me, that Holstein family was one of them. Even in Vietnam, I thought that was kind of unique to where I had a Chinese name and they have Chinese names and I look Oriental of course and I really didn’t feel uncomfortable with my own people as far as Marines, but when I was with the Vietnamese and they were looking at me and it was the same kind of thing, it was a little spooky at times. You could think that, “maybe I would be mistaken for somebody.” Good thing I was a lot bigger than those guys were and that’s what made the difference. You hear about the war and segregation and the things that were going on during the war years. We never experienced that in the 9 Marines, especially in tanks because it was a specialized unit. I didn’t really think about it, except I read an article of some guy down in Cedar City and he was slight built and everything and he was full Chinese, not half, and he was experiencing the same kind of thing, but it was over there. WJ: When you became a police officer for Ogden City, you mentioned that you kind of got some strange looks from some of the cab drivers that you exploited earlier. Did you see anything that was questionable or kind of lost in history, some fun or cool stories? JL: I don’t know. I’m not sure which stories you’re talking about. There are a lot of stories, but as a policeman I would actually have some good contacts on the street because of that. I could talk to the black crowd I could talk to the bartenders and the drinking crowd and it didn’t really matter because they knew who I was and they knew the type of person I was. As far as being a policeman, I’m not sure which story you want to hear. WJ: Did any of your former contacts ever try to sever ties with you as soon as you became a police officer? JL: Yes. There was a couple that I know for sure that backed away because they knew I was a police officer and I knew they were criminals, basically, and they were burglars. They would come into the restaurant of course and I knew who they were and there were things going on that maybe you would want to look at as a police officer of what’s going on. I would walk into a place and I’d think I smelled marijuana being smoked or people drunk and wanting to sell stolen stuff out of their cars. But that’s when I was a kid and these were the same people 10 that knew I was a policeman now. It was hard, but I could have went both ways, I could have ended up in prison instead of a police officer. There were some people that shied away from us that we didn’t see for a while. In fact, we arrested a couple of them that were breaking into the old ice skating rink down there and they were regulars of China Temple and I remembered them well. WJ: As a child, you were growing up with the China Temple on 25th Street during the big push for anti-vice. Are you familiar with any of the gambling halls or any of it that was present at the time? JL: I know that there was gambling happening and I knew that we had vice officers supposedly working those areas. I’ve heard stories that the vice officers would look the other way, but I don’t know. I’ve never seen it. I’ve heard just like everybody else had heard it on the street, but there were a few officers’ names that were mentioned, but I won’t mention them. They were working vice at the time and there was questionable things happening or not happening I guess because it was still there. There were still back room games and stuff going on, but as far as being a kid and seeing all that stuff, it was mostly by ear. I’ve never really seen it and the police officers that I knew, mostly the beat cops that would come in for coffee when I was a kid and the vice guys would, they were up the ladder. WJ: Do you have any memories of the Union Station in its prime? JL: Oh, it was horrible. I mean, Union Station itself was, of course, the hub of the railroad. Everybody was there and I would see a couple hundred people in there when a couple of the Amtrak trains would meet in Ogden. The restaurant part of 11 it, it just overwhelmed you. I could not imagine that many people standing outside in line waiting to come in to eat. I would be young enough to where I could walk upon the viaduct and there would be trains from the depot all the way to the river and a big round house they used to have that you’d watch the engines being maintained and everything. All that’s gone now, but there were probably 25 or 26 tracks along that side of the depot. That was fun going up there just to watch the trains. I’ve spent a lot of time on the overpass watching the trains go in and out and the workings of the round table on the old maintenance sheds that was kind of interesting. But now it’s all gone. In fact, that’s what killed the China Temple basically is when the train traffic died out. It was kind of unique because partners of my dad have seen that and they moved from the China Temple to start their own business in the 1960’s. The only China Night was one of Dad’s partners on 28th and Washington, but Dad never wanted to leave that area. They made enough money to live on, but not like the 60’s when they were buying Cadillac’s. In fact, my dad’s 1961 Cadillac was a mover. WJ: Sound like you have some experiences with that Cadillac as well. JL: Oh yeah. Well, you used to go down to Lagoon and see the Beach Boys and the Paul Revere and the Raiders and the Righteous Brother and go down to concerts and have your dad’s Cadillac and people kind of just, well to make the difference, there’s an old drive-in up on 40th Street by the college and I would go up there in my 1958 Ford, which was my car and I’d be sitting there 20 minutes before 12 somebody would come by. I’d get up in Dad’s Cadillac and I had three or four carhops running to the car. So, yeah, I had a good time in that car. WJ: Do you have any questions? JL: But it was fun growing up on that street and it was a learning experience I’ll never forget and just like being in the Marine Corps, for example, it gave me a broader view of what people are like. Then, after the Marine Corps, that widened even more because of Vietnam. It was interesting. I’ve never regretted it. PL: he used to always tell me his dad drove by sound, tell them that. WJ: Yes, let’s hear that story. JL: The same Cadillac, Dad, of course, was born in 1905 and died in 1993, so that puts him at about 80 something. As he got older, he would drive by sound instead of by sight. At probably 88 or 89 years old he was still driving and every corner of that Cadillac had a dent in it. It didn’t matter what corner you looked at, there was a ding in it. Some of them were pretty good size too. We were at the nursing home visiting, what I call my wicked stepmother, because she was a stepmother from China, back from the old country and didn’t speak any English or anything. She was in a nursing home and Dad was visiting her and I was with him and he drove in the parking lot and everything was fine, but when we left he backed the car out and banged into the car behind him. I said, “You hit that car back there.” He said, “I know. That’s how I know it’s there.” Needless to say, we took away his driver’s license shortly after that. It’s kind of interesting because when he went into a nursing home after falling and breaking his hip before he 13 died, he didn’t speak English anymore, he just quit speaking English totally. All he spoke was Chinese toward the end. It was kind of unique. WJ: Your wife’s grandfather was the barber at the Healy Hotel, correct? JL: Right next to it. WJ: Right next to the Healy. PL: It was in the Healy. WJ: It was in the Healy? Okay. Did you have any experiences with that as well? I know you guys met long after. JL: I probably went in there as a kid. I remember the shoe shine stand and I remember going in and getting haircuts and stuff, but there was also a Filipino guy that used to run it, Plow, I think his name was. There were two or three barbers there, but I didn’t realize that Pat’s grandfather ran that place until after we were married and stuff and it was kind of unique how small the world was. WJ: Most definitely. There have been a lot of great restaurants, bars, and hotels on 25th that are no longer there, like the Healy. What are your memories of some of them? JL: I had some Japanese friends that were the same age as I was and going to school, Mike Ryujin and Curtis Nakyishi. As you’d go up the street, you had the China Temple that was in the one hundred block, then you’d go up next to the 200 hundred block and then you had the Star Noodle and then you had the Japanese restaurant by this Nakyishi person. They ran a small restaurant right by the Kokomo there and then you had Sukamoto’s that used to run the Eagle Café 14 and then you had the Senate Café that was up by where the bank is now up on Washington. I don’t know if you heard the stories about the 25th Street Angel, a Japanese lady that cashed the checks for the homeless or something like that. Then, there were the motels where my dad lived. He lived in the Helena Hotel for years on the south side and then the hotel next to the temple and then the Marion and a few of the bars down there like, Poncho’s, and all the other people down there. All the bars have been pretty much the same forever. There was a lot of restaurants and different kinds of restaurants, Japanese, Chinese, but the two most distinctive, the most favorite that people went to was the Star and the Temple. Then after the Temple died down, all these other Chinese places started to sprout up because Dad had enough influence to where he trained enough of those cooks that there was the Grand View down in Provo, and then Siam in Orem, and then there’s the second Grand View up in Logan. In fact, I used to go with my dad and there wasn’t a place in Utah that I had to pay for any food because he knew everybody and he trained basically everybody. Even now, out in Tooele I have a cousin that runs one and there used to be one out of Wendover and all over Utah. He was quite an influence, he was a good cook. WJ: Did he cook up to the day he died, or was there a point where he decided to retire? JL: I think he was probably in his late 80’s by the time he retired. One time, he was a tough old geezer, I’ll tell you. Do you know what a cubing machine is for meat? WJ: Yes. 15 JL: With one hundred blades or so on each blade and they rotate with each other? My dad stuck his hand in there and literally cubed his hand. It didn’t go all the way through but he stopped it in time. My brother owned the Dragon Café on 3rd Street. Dad used to help my brother after the Temple went down. He was like 70, and my brother passed out. My father stayed awake all this time and he literally was helping my stepbrother because he was so excited about what was going on. They had to surgically remove the tines and stuff from his hand because of the blades and they had to sew him all back up. The next day, you’ve seen the Chinese square cleavers that they use? He wrapped rags around it to where it was big enough to where he could hold it in his hand with the bandages. He was chopping vegetables working like it never happened. There was another time when he was around 75 or something like that I think he had a heart attack and he literally sat through it in the break room or the break table where they ate their meals. Then later on in life he had to wear a pacemaker, so I knew he had heart issues. He was a tough little guy and he worked hard. WJ: Sound like it. Are there any other stories or experiences you want to share with us before we finish up? JL: Not really, I was just thinking that as a career police officer there are a lot of stories, but that’s a different subject totally. My experience on 25th Street helped me a bunch as a police officer and it helped me to know people really well and what to look for and what not to do when you got older. 16 WJ: How do you feel about Ogden’s change? Going from a railroad to the railroad dying to the new face lift it’s getting. How do you feel about the whole change and where it’s at now? JL: I think it’s geared up for commercialism and tax dollars and things like that. The ambience of hometown kinds of things is gone. It just, everything is geared to making money, but that’s the way our community has to survive too. I am glad of the venues that are being developed in the Ogden area to attract people in, but you still have liquor laws to worry about and things like that that will never ever change. Until they do that, there are just things that people are just going to not do. If you don’t keep up with the commercialized city, then the money coming in, you won’t make it anyway. I hated to see downtown die. It made me sad just to see all those empty stores downtown and then the mall going away. It’s okay to see the outdoor stuff going on downtown now, but it was okay to have the mall too. It’s changed. I’m changed. I keep forgetting that when you get a little older your mind changes as to how you feel about things. I think we’ll make it, I think Ogden is going to be fine. I think the things that are happening in the police departments and things like that around us are never going to change—just different kind of crime and different kind of issues. They’re always going to be there. WJ: Thank you for letting us come and talk to you. JL: You betcha. 17