NEVADA STATE MUSEUM & HISTORICAL SOCIETY LAS VEGAS, NEVADA THE LAS VEGAS I REMEMBER INTERVIEW WITH NANYU TOMIYASU Taken At KNPR Studios 5151 Boulder Highway Las Vegas, Nevada TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 2 MR. WRIGHT: We're very pleased that you're able to and willing to come in and talk with us again. I know you've been interviewed a lot. MR. TOMIYASU: Yeah. MR. WRIGHT: Why don't we start at the beginning and get your complete name on the tape. MR. TOMIYASU: Okay. My name is Nanya Tomiyasu. MR. WRIGHT: And starting at the obvious point, would you please tell us how and when the Tomiyasu family decided to come to Las Vegas. MR. TOMIYASU: Well, my dad came here in 1914 at the insistence of M. M. Riley who was a real estate man. I don't know whether he was a real estate agent or whatever back in the 1913, 1914 era. And he came here in 1914, and then he decided to come up to Las Vegas in 1916 permanently. MR. WRIGHT: And where had he been living prior to that? MR. TOMIYASU: He was a chef at the Elks Club in San Bernardino, California. MR. WRIGHT: And Las Vegas was an unknown spot out in the middle of the desert then. What was it about Las Vegas that your father thought offered possibilities? MR. TOMIYASU: Well, Mr. Riley told my dad that they don't have the Oriental Exclusion Act up here, that anyone can own land as long as they can buy it and pay for it. He says, TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 3 "You better go up there and look around. And if you look and see any type of ground or property that you might be interested in, let me know, and we'll see what the price is and how available it is." Well, he came up here in 1914, and he looked at two properties, the old Clark and Ronnow ranch, which is basically about where Tamarus and Warm Springs are today. It's the southeast corner of that. It's about an 80-acre parcel. And then he went on down that old wagon trail into the property that Ed Von Tobel and Jake Beckley owned, which today is the Sierra Vista Ranchos. It was 120 acres. Now, they had gotten in there, and they had planted some fruit trees and things back several years prior to 1914. MR. ANDERSON: That is the Von Tobels had? MR. TOMIYASU: Yeah. And then he looked at the property right next to it, which was owned by James Pasno. And Pasno was an engineer for the Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, and San Pedro Railroad. He had the run between Las Vegas and Yermo, turned around and came back the following day from Yermo back to Las Vegas. But, anyhow, Dan Potter, an early Mormon pioneer, he had that property under lease from Jim Pasno. And my dad asked Dan Potter if he was willing to sell his lease to him, and he says, "Yeah." He said, "How much you want for it?" TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 4 And he says, "I'll give you everything I've got, crops, horses, the tools, the farming tools, and everything that I have here for 1200 bucks." So my dad says, "Well, I don't have the 1200, but I'll see what I can do about getting it." Well, anyhow, in the next couple of years time, he worked on that. And then by 1916, he had borrowed the money from a bank here in the city of Las Vegas, the First State Bank. MR. WRIGHT: It would have been the First State Bank, yeah. MR. TOMIYASU: First State Bank, yeah. And Mr. Parks is the one that owned the bank. And his son was William S. Parks, who was a dentist here in town. Anyhow, Mr. Parks says, "Yes, I'll loan you the 1200 bucks." So that's how come he got the lease from Jim Pasno. MR. WRIGHT: Were there other Japanese or other Oriental families here at the time? MR. TOMIYASU: Yes, there was, just two or three other families. I don't know who they were exactly. I do remember my dad saying something about Tom Sakai and his wife and four children. I imagine he only had one or two at that point in time. But, then, they had four children all together. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 5 MR. WRIGHT: Did he do some farming over off of West Charleston near where the hospital was? MR. TOMIYASU: Yes, off of Shadow Lane. MR. WRIGHT: That might have been the Ullom property, because I know he leased the front of his property to a Japanese family. MR. TOMIYASU: Yeah. That's where Tom Sakai was first. I'm pretty sure that's the property. I don't think Shadow Lane was through yet, but, anyhow, that's where the properties were, yeah. MR. WRIGHT: How about railroad workers? I know at some point, there were quite a number of railroad workers that were Japanese as well. MR. TOMIYASU: Well, they brought the Japanese in. They had about 50 families here, maybe not quite 50, maybe 40. But, anyhow, they had a complete contingent of men that worked in the shops there at the L.A.S.L. and San Pedro Railroad there, about where the government building is today. They had a round shop there. And the round shop had the turn table where they could turn the locomotives and whatever they were working on into these different slots. And I remember seeing them working on the cars. There was one man that I knew that was a real good printer. So he had the job of putting the names, the Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, and San Pedro Railroads, on all TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 6 of the cars, all of the locomotives and all of that on there, and the serial number of each one of the locomotives and whatever they had. MR. WRIGHT: Now, this is not an important issue but it's one that's always bugged me. There was a compound for railroad workers on the railroad property. Do you remember exactly where that was or approximately? MR. TOMIYASU: Just west of the round house. MR. WRIGHT: That's west of where the round house was? MR. TOMIYASU: Yes. It's right on the property. They had a board fence around the whole property. They built a whole series of apartments in there, probably one-bedroom, two-bedroom, three-bedroom apartments. And the families lived in these long buildings. As I remember, there was about four, five, six buildings, something like that. They were big long buildings, and it probably held about anywheres from six to eight, maybe as many as ten apartments on each one of those big long buildings. MR. WRIGHT: Okay. Your father then buys the property in 1916. Was he a family man at that point? MR. TOMIYASU: No. He had been corresponding with my mother for three or four years. Well, they were married by proxy, I imagine, around 1915, 1916, and then 1917 she came to the United States. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 7 MR. WRIGHT: And joined him here in Las Vegas? MR. TOMIYASU: No. She landed in San Francisco in about August of 1917, and then she came directly here. And in May of 1918 I was born. MR. WRIGHT: Is this sort of a picture bride? MR. TOMIYASU: Yes. MR. WRIGHT: And your mother was where? She was in Japan? MR. TOMIYASU: Yes. She was from Sendai, which is the northern part of Japan. My dad is from Kumamoto, which is real close to Nagasaki, which is the southern part of Japan. But, my dad came here in 1898 when he was 16 years old. And he landed in Victoria, British Columbia, for a week or ten days, and then the boat sailed from there on into San Francisco. And he landed in San Francisco in August of 1898. MR. WRIGHT: Had he had any agricultural experience? MR. TOMIYASU: Yes. His whole family was agricultural. They had bamboo forests. They had sugar cane fields. They were land owners. They had about 50, 60 acres. And it was something really unusual for a Japanese family to own that much land. Apparently, part of that was fairly close to the ocean, so they were able to go out and get seaweed and a lot of things that were products of the sea. So they didn't TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 8 really hurt for any food or eating and things of that nature. Where they had to get help, and they had to buy this, was things like salt. And they had to buy cloth for clothes and things of that nature. MR. WRIGHT: A number of people had tried agriculture in the Las Vegas Valley going back to the Mormons in the 1850s, and they were not terribly successful at it. The Tomiyasu family, on the other hand, was very successful at it. Can you sort of explain how different it was or what the difference was? MR. TOMIYASU: Well, my dad started in 1916. And the first thing he got was a seed catalog from Agler and Mustard Seed Company in Los Angeles and Germain's Seed Company. And they both had planting guides for seeds that they sold. And those planting dates were all determined by what they had done in Southern California. So when my dad used those planting dates for the different seeds that they sold, it was just a total disaster. And so he thought, "Well, okay, what I'm going to have to do now is go into a scientific approach on the whole thing. And I will plant carrots every two weeks throughout the year." And then those dates where the crop really came in, produced a good crop, it took a longer time to bolt -- in other words, go to seed and so on and so forth -- that would be the ideal time. And so then he whittled that down in the next five years. After failure, after failure, he TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 9 finally got a list that we use today in planting vegetable seeds here in Southern Nevada. MR. WRIGHT: So, the first years were very difficult? MR. TOMIYASU: Yeah, they were very difficult. Number one, the ground had a lot of alkali in it, a lot of salinity. And, number two, the weather was hot, 125, probably as much as 130 degree temperatures, but they didn't have the humidity that we have today. It was only 3 percent -- 2, 3 percent, 4 percent. And then on a rainy day, it might get up around 8, 9, 10 percent. Today it's 20, 25 percent, up as much as 35 percent. And then if a cloud floats over the area, well, it's up around 50 percent. So, anyhow, that's where the basic difference was. Now, after he found out that the alkali was the thing that was keeping him from producing crops, after determining the dates of planting the seed, then he found out that the alkali, because of the nature of the alkali itself here, which is calcium and magnesium sulfates and carbonates, basically -- that's getting it down to a basic area of concern -- he found that if he didn't know how to plant it in this alkaline soil, he'd never have a problem. And that's what happened. So for probably a couple of three years he had sporadic success, but then it wasn't a continuous success of being able to put whatever, carrots, for instance, by a TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 10 certain date or a certain time of the year and so on and so forth. He found out that he had to develop a planting procedure that would circumvent the alkali from killing the seed as it sprouted. So he developed the process of furrowing a five-acre field or two-acre field, lets say, for whatever. It might be carrots, beets, turnips, green onions, whatever it might be. He'd run a big head of water down the furrow, one row at a time basically, or two rows or three rows. And, then, he would get a high water mark. The next day he would come in immediately and then take a little planting device and plant just below the high water mark. MR. WRIGHT: So that the alkali then was -- MR. TOMIYASU: That's right. The alkali had already been washed farther on down. So, anyhow, he found out that the seeds came up in two to three to four days, and then it just kept right on growing. Now, when he watered the second time to keep the seeds supplied with water, he watered down lower. So he found out that that water went climbing on up into the root zone of the seed that was sprouting already, but it also continued to go up higher and higher to where there was the top of the furrow. And then he found out that it would create a white cap on the furrow, but down where the plants are growing there was no alkali. Well, there was alkali, but it was a tolerable TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 11 percentage. MR. WRIGHT: So this was a process of scientific experimentation and that's great. MR. TOMIYASU: Yes. MR. WRIGHT: I want to get a picture about some of the other agricultural areas around town. You've mentioned the Von Tobel place and the Clark Ronnow ranch. What kinds of agricultural efforts were going on in the valley back then? MR. TOMIYASU: Billy Owens had a place over there on -- I think, it's Martin Luther King and about Vegas. It's between Vegas Drive and Lake Mead Boulevard now. It's just behind the new soldiers hospital there, the Veterans Hospital. MR. WRIGHT: That's not the one that's at Bonanza Village, is it, that general area? MR. TOMIYASU: No, that's the old -- MR. WRIGHT: Which place was that? MR. TOMIYASU: Huh? MR. WRIGHT: The one at Bonanza Village, do you know who had that one? MR. TOMIYASU: Jefferson is the only name that I can recall at the moment. They called it the Jefferson properties or the Jefferson ranch. And when Tiberti first came into town, he bought some property. I don't know whether it was from Jefferson or it was right next door to it, just west of TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 12 there. MR. WRIGHT: I've always wondered about that property. That's why I sort of stopped you there. MR. TOMIYASU: Well, that property was very small compared to what my dad had. My dad had 160 acres, 120 of which he had constantly farmed. Part of it was in the Duck Creek flood plane, and there was a constant threat of flood waters washing the crops away. So he just farmed whatever he could. The other thing was that next to the Duck Creek Wash was a tremendous amount of alkali. Just about every year the waters would come on down through there, and then that would seep up into the soil there, which was basically a sandy soil, and then you could see right on top it was nothing but white alkali that had come up and then the water had evaporated. MR. WRIGHT: You started to mention the Owens ranch or farm and some of the other farms. Were most of these truck operations? MR. TOMIYASU: No. MR. WRIGHT: Fruits and vegetables? MR. TOMIYASU: No. MR. WRIGHT: What kinds? MR. TOMIYASU: Oh, they were mainly alfalfa. Most of the people that were here, like, well, Jefferson, I'm sure he had alfalfa. Billy Owens had alfalfa because he was a TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 13 horseman. MR. WRIGHT: Of present day Owens Boulevard or Owens Street? MR. TOMIYASU: Yeah. MR. WRIGHT: Okay. MR. TOMIYASU: And he was a cattleman and a horseman. Most all of the white people here were cattlemen or they loved horses. And, of course, the Mormons, when they first came in here, brought in horses and animals like that so they would help with the farming operation. And some of the first farming operations that they had was down there at the old ranch, which is where the Sawyer Building is today. MR. WRIGHT: Your father came here in 1916. The town was probably less than 2,000 people. And as late as 1930, it didn't get up to 5,000 people. Was that a big enough market to support a farm like your father's farm? MR. TOMIYASU: Well, by 1930, he had only been farming successfully for about seven or eight years because it was in 1921, '22, maybe even '23, that he really got a feel for how to plant the crops and so on and so forth. But at that point in time he was dealing with Gene Ward of the Mesquite Grocery. And there was the Mesquite Grocery -- MR. WRIGHT: And you might mention where that was just so that people can visualize it. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 14 MR. TOMIYASU: Yeah, it's First and Fremont. It's the southeast coroner of First and Fremont. Then he had a cash and carry grocery over on the other side about where the present day Horseshoe Club is. It was right next to the Boulder Club, which was, I would say, right about the middle of the block is where this Mesquite cash grocery was. MR. WRIGHT: What the heck was a cash grocery as compared to, say, the Mesquite Grocery? MR. TOMIYASU: Well, they didn't have charge accounts. MR. WRIGHT: Oh, so that's the simple difference there. You had to have cash. MR. TOMIYASU: Yeah, that's right, because Gene Ward did all of the accounting over there. He owned this other building along with Herb Krause. But Herb didn't have the personnel there. He didn't have accountants and all of that. And the accountant that was working for Gene Ward at the time was Albert C. Melton, who became a reverend with the -- what's that church down there? MR. WRIGHT: I believe he was a Methodist minister, wasn't he, Melton? MR. TOMIYASU: I don't know what it was. Anyhow, Albert C. Melton started in with that church. I don't know whether he was an ordained priest or a reverend. But, anyhow, TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 15 he started in there, and he apparently was teaching Sunday school and things like that. He was very interested in the religious aspects of the church. And, eventually, he became the priest or the reverend for that particular church. And that's about where Searles and Eastern is. It's still there. The building is still there and the church is still functional, although Albert Melton has been dead for 15, 20 years, 30 years. But, anyhow, he was Gene Ward's bookkeeper. He did all of the bookkeeping for Gene Ward. MR. WRIGHT: And Gene Ward was a principal market then for the Tomiyasu farm? MR. TOMIYASU: Yes. That and then the Rainbow Cafe, which was owned by the Fongs at First and Carson Streets on the northeast corner. They bought quite a few vegetables from my dad. The Silver Cafe -- no, I think it was called the City Cafe, which was owned by a Japanese fellow, and I've forgot the man's name now. But, anyhow, he was over there on North First Street. It would be just about where the -- North First -- MR. WRIGHT: I think the Silver Cafe was the Fongs, if I'm not mistaken. MR. TOMIYASU: Yeah. Silver Cafe, that cafe was bought out by Fong. MR. WRIGHT: I see. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 16 MR. TOMIYASU: But Fong also owned the Rainbow Cafe down the street. MR. WRIGHT: So did you sell to the railroad at that point? MR. TOMIYASU: No. My dad sold things to the railroad, but it was through Gene Ward because, see, they wanted all that stuff carried forward and then at the end of the month get a statement, and then they would send a check and so on and so forth. So it was a lot of credit business. But my dad shipped a lot of stuff to Cedar City, Saint George. Now, he had 20 acres of asparagus, for instance. And in the spring of the year, right at the early part of the asparagus season, which would be January, February, March, it would only grow in the day long enough to cut the next morning. But then toward May -- April, May, and June, it got so we had to go through the fields twice a day. MR. WRIGHT: Twice a day, well. MR. TOMIYASU: Once in the morning and once in the afternoon, and got almost as much in the afternoon as we did in the morning. MR. WRIGHT: That's amazing. MR. TOMIYASU: And then the 20 acres of asparagus produced -- I don't know what it was -- 15, 20 boxes of asparagus. That's more than this town would ever be able to TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 17 consume. So he sold whatever he could here, but then a lot of it went to Kingman. It went to Saint George. It went to Goldfield and clear up to Cedar City. MR. WRIGHT: It sounds like he grew almost everything under the sun out there. MR. TOMIYASU: Everything. There isn't anything you can't raise here that you can't buy seeds for. He grew endives. He grew Swiss chard. He grew cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts. Well, anything that you can buy seeds for, you could plant and grow here. And he experimented with everything in the seed catalog. So he was able to produce spinach, and, oh, there's things like bell peppers, eggplant, and then, of course, all of the melon crops, regardless of what it was, crenshaws or honeydews or casabas, cantaloupes, all the different kinds of cantaloupes, hearts of gold, or the ones that would ripen on the outside like you'd normally find in the grocery stores today. MR. WRIGHT: I think this is a side of Las Vegas that most people would not be aware of, you know, how productive the soil could be with the right techniques. MR. TOMIYASU: Well, it is. My dad, in 1950, he got a contract with the Big Six Companies to sell them produce throughout the year for the life of the contract that they had, which lasted into 1936. So during the height of the Depression, when people were getting ten cents an hour, were TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 18 promised ten cents an hour and couldn't even get the ten cents, my dad was able to get a contract price on all of the produce that he got, and he got a check from the Big Six Companies every month. He also sold to the Anderson Brothers Supply Company, which fed 3,000 men every day. MR. WRIGHT: That's a very big market. MR. TOMIYASU: Well, they would serve nine meals a day -- three thousand, a thousand at a time. The dining room held a thousand men. And they would have three sets of breakfasts come in, and then three sets of lunches come in, and then three sets of dinners. The people that worked down at the dam, they carried box lunches with them. And I don't know what they paid for those box lunches, but, man, if you tried to eat them today, they'd just about kill you they had so much food. And, anyhow, they also had, right at the very beginning, what they called Camp B right at the head of the dam. Well, they were starting to dig the diversion tunnels, and the Camp B had, I think, it was either one- or two-story barracks buildings down there. And they must have, oh, had a couple of hundred men down there. And it was hot. And they had a dining room down there in the kitchen, and we had to go down there. We had to take produce clear on down to Camp B. And one time we had a big load of melons and things on the truck. And then they had a steam shovel where they TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 19 were digging the rock out that they had dynamited so that they could get the railroad down there. And my dad didn't know whether he could make it around there or not because this other side was just material that they had taken out of the breaks, where they had broken the material, and it was still soft. Well, he went through there, and that thing caved a little bit, but he made it through. So, on the way back, since he didn't have three or four tons of produce on the truck, you know, he was able to go on through. But that's the kind of country that we had to contend with. MR. WRIGHT: And how often would your father take a trip then? MR. TOMIYASU: Every Tuesday and every Friday, twice a week, and it was a full truckload. MR. WRIGHT: Before I get off the subject, wasn't there, in the 1930s, a black man that had a spread somewhere near where the Tomiyasu farm was? MR. TOMIYASU: A what? MR. WRIGHT: An African-American man that had a spread out there? MR. TOMIYASU: Yeah, Joe Lightfoot. MR. WRIGHT: Could you tell me about him? MR. TOMIYASU: Yeah, Joe Lightfoot had a piece of property. Well, I don't know how I could describe it, where it actually was. I would say about where, let's say, the Bank TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 20 of America building is today on Warm Springs Road, just behind it. MR. WRIGHT: Now, I'd run into that from time to time, and there was another name which doesn't occur to me at the moment. MR. TOMIYASU: Yeah, there's Abraham Mitchell. He was another black guy. MR. WRIGHT: Right. MR. TOMIYASU: And he owned 80 acres up there on -- oh, what do you call that complex? It's right about the middle of the complex there off of Paradise Road and where the railroad tracks cross. Where did the railroad tracks -- the railroad tracks were just south. No, it was north of Mitchell's property. About where Maryland Parkway and about where one of the first streets that go down through there that would hit about the railroad tracks is about where his property was. MR. WRIGHT: I think he tried to develop a little bit of a resort out there, didn't he, that was open because the city was increasingly segregated at that point? I vaguely recall that he was encouraging people, black, white, whatever to -- MR. TOMIYASU: He built a big swimming pool out there, and he cemented it in. I don't know whether he was a contractor or not, but, anyhow, he was a real good cement TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 21 man. He did a lot of plastering and stuccoing and that sort of thing. And then he also did a lot of flat work. MR. WRIGHT: And I understand there was a fire there about 1934, and then I haven't been able to trace anything. What became of Mr. Mitchell? MR. TOMIYASU: His daughter, I think, is still living, Natalie. Natalie would be probably 75 to 80, between 75 and 80. My understanding is that she is living here, not only in town -- either that or close by here somewheres. I haven't met her. I haven't talked to her. I haven't seen her in 60 years, since we were going to school together at the Paradise School. MR. WRIGHT: At the Paradise School. MR. TOMIYASU: Paradise District School. MR. WRIGHT: Okay. Your father is joined by his wife. Tell me just very briefly about the family. When did the family get larger? MR. TOMIYASU: My brother was born in 1919. I had a sister that was born in -- MR. WRIGHT: And your brother's name was? MR. TOMIYASU: Kiyo, K-i-y-o. MR. WRIGHT: And your sister? MR. TOMIYASU: The sister, which is number three, Maymie, M-a-y-m-i-e, and she passed away in 1942. And then Uwamie, U-w-a-m-i-e, is the baby of the family, and she's 75 TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 22 years old now. Now, both my brother Kiyo and -- Kiyo first off went to Cal Tech, and he got his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering at Cal Tech. Then he went a year to Columbia University and got his master's degree in electrical engineering. And in 1941 he had gotten a three-year or four-year scholarship from Stanford University to continue on his Ph.D. work in electrical engineering. And then, of course, in 1942, well, the war came on. The war came on, and they told him to get the H- out of there. So that's what he did. He came on back home in 1942. They immediately had him go up to Salt Lake City, Fort Douglas, Utah, to take his physical examination for the service. And his eyes are real bad and he had flat feet, so they turned him down. In fact, they turned him down either three or four times between 1942 and '44. And, finally, Dr. William S. Parks, the dentist who was the head of the Selective Service Board here, told him that there's no sense in him staying on the farm if he could apply to some of the universities back East and work toward his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering. So he applied to Columbia, MIT, and Harvard. And all of them offered him scholarships, but Harvard gave him a real good scholarship. So he went from 1943 to 1948, and he got his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering. Well, then he went to work for Sperry TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 23 Gyroscope in New York City, Long Island. And then he went to General Electric, and they sent him to Menlo Park, California. And then from Menlo Park -- that was the time that John Glenn was sent into the atmosphere. And then when he came on down and landed in the Pacific Ocean, there was several seconds there that there was no communications. And radio communications, they found out, wasn't going to work, you know, if they wanted to converse all the while the thing was getting into the atmosphere and so on and so forth. So the Federal Government gave General Electric the contract. I don't know whether they bid it or however. Anyhow, they got the contract to do all of the research on laser, which is light transmission. Well, it's optics is what it is. And my brother was picked from all of the personnel of General Electric to head the laser labs in Schenectady, New York. And he was there for six or seven years. And he eventually wound up with 27 basic patents in laser. So all of the things that he did the research work on at Schenectady, all patents are only granted in names of individuals, so he's named on those patents, although it was the GE facilities that he was using, so he had to sign all of that back to GE with a certain percentage of royalties that he'd get from all of that. Well, anyhow, after he completed all of that work and TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 24 they closed down the laser labs at Schenectady, he went with GE on the space program. And they sent him down to Paoli, Pennsylvania. And they had a big space lab there. And so he had worked up until -- well, I don't know -- 1948, '50, probably about '55, '56, along in there, he went over to Paoli, Pennsylvania. And he is still living in Paoli, and he's still with the space program. Four or five years ago, General Electric sold the space program to Martin-Marietta. And Martin-Marietta then sold a part interest to Lockheed, so it's Lockheed and Martin-Marietta today, and he's still working for them. MR. WRIGHT: I think the rest of your generation went off to college as well. Did all of the rest of the children go to college also? MR. TOMIYASU: Yes, all of us went to college. My youngest sister, who is still living, is one of the chief radiologists of cancer research. She is a board accredited clinical pathologist for the Veterans Administration at Sawtelle Veterans Hospital. And she is a graduate of Womens Medical College in Philadelphia. And she spent a year of internship at Queens Hospital in New York. And then shortly after that, she joined the Veterans Administration, and she's been at Sawtelle ever since. So she's been there since 1950, somewhere along in there. MR. WRIGHT: And how about yourself? TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 25 MR. TOMIYASU: Well, I went to University of California Berkeley. And basically my first four years was in engineering, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, and then I was getting into electrical engineering. But electrical was just not my bag. It went in one ear and out the other. And so I changed from that to architecture. And when I changed to architecture, I lost a year and a half, two years in there of a lot of the work that I had done that was toward an engineering degree. And so in 1940 I wrote to Frank Lloyd Wright. I told him I was dissatisfied with the University of California Berkeley architectural division, which was a very small division, and it wasn't staffed by any recognized architects, except one man, and that was a Professor Goodman, and he was a practicing architect. Outside of that, the other seven or eight professors and assistant professors were all just people that had gotten their degree in architecture, but they had never made a name for themselves, including the dean of the college. So, anyhow, I wrote to Frank Lloyd Wright about that, and he said -- this was back in September, October. It might have even been November. But, anyhow, in the latter part of 1940 I wrote to him, and he says, "I want to see you at Taliesen West, Scottsdale, Arizona, between Christmas and New Years. I'll be down there. We'll have moved and been TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 26 completely moved and settled in for the winter months there at Scottsdale. You name the date on which you can be there, and then I'll make sure that I have the full day for you." So, whatever day that was, I went down there and spent basically eight hours with Frank Lloyd Wright. And he talked about everything, whether it was lively arts or whether it was art, pen and ink, into social orders, everything. And that man is just brilliant. And so, anyhow, he told me a lot of his own personal experiences, including what he did there at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo when he was building that. And then through the 1923 earthquake, it never even cracked a brick off of that thing, and they had one of the worst earthquakes that Japan had ever gone through. But he designed it in kind of like a swamp area. And he put these piles down into this gooey mess down there, tied it all in with rebar and concrete, and then built the hotel on top of that. So it suffered no loss whatever, outside of maybe the utilities or something like that being cut off. But, anyhow, he told me that one of the things that was really rewarding as far as he was concerned was the Oriental concept of landscaping, landscape, and landscape architecture. He says, "You don't move a rock. You don't move a tree without being dog-gone sure that you absolutely have to have that thing removed before you remove it." TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 27 And my dad used to tell me when we would go out on some landscapes here in the city of Las Vegas or we'd have to get out and remove a big rock, for instance, he says, "You know, if this was in Japan and we were doing this landscaping," he said, "we'd have to apologize to the rock for having to move it. So you've got to remember where the background is." In other words, you don't just move something because it's in your way. Get out there and move it with the intent that you didn't place it there or no one that you know of placed it there, but it was placed there by whoever the higher-ups are and you need to apologize for having to move it. MR. WRIGHT: Of course, Las Vegas was built on very different principles than that. The city would look a good deal different if everybody had followed that philosophy. So you then developed a career in landscape architecture and landscaping? MR. TOMIYASU: Yes. So that's what I've done the last 45 years. MR. WRIGHT: I wanted to go back just a little bit. Did all the children work on the farm before going off to -- MR. MERENDA: Oh, yes. MR. WRIGHT: -- go to school and then come home and work the farm? MR. TOMIYASU: That's right. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 28 MR. WRIGHT: Work on the weekends? MR. TOMIYASU: Yep. We had no time for football, basketball, track, or anything like that because, number one, we lived ten miles out of town. And for us to travel back and forth between football games and so on and so forth, it was just out. I mean, we had the transportation. We had, you know, modern transportation. You know, like in 1930, '31, my dad bought a 1930 or 1931 Model A Ford, two-door sedan. And we drove that to school for several years. I know I drove it until I graduated from Las Vegas High School in 1935. And my brother, I think, still drove that car in 19 -- no, 1936 is when they sold that car, and they bought a 1936 Oldsmobile from Jim Cashman. MR. WRIGHT: That's the kind of car I learned to drive in was a 1936 Oldsmobile. MR. MERENDA: Oh. Well, anyhow, we used that car for quite a number of years. And I remember my dad paying a total sum of $528 for that Model A Ford. MR. WRIGHT: Where did you go to school? Was it different schools, or did you all go to the same school? MR. TOMIYASU: No, no. 1930, the Paradise District School, the district decided to abandon the school because most of the kids were out of that school. It was getting down to like seven or eight students. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 29 MR. WRIGHT: And where was the Paradise District School? MR. TOMIYASU: Right now, the closest that I can describe it would be Tamarus and Warm Springs Road. It was on the old property of the old Clark and Ronnow ranch. And Mr. Blake, Mark Blake, I think he was either buying that or he was leasing it from Clark and Ronnow, Ed W. Clark and C. C. Ronnow. And he was farming part of it. He was raising mostly alfalfa. But he had to pump a lot of his water. And so they had a little bit of an artesian flow, but it wasn't near the kind of water that my dad had on his property. He had 550 gallons a minute coming out of an artesian well for over 60 years. So you know there's quite a bit of difference if you have to pump anything over ten or 15 gallons a minute and then, you know, somebody that has 550 gallons that's bubbling out and going all over the place. So that's why my dad decided that he didn't want to buy up there. Besides, the ground wasn't that deep. It was probably two or three foot deep. And down where he bought the property it was 40 foot. The depth of the topsoil was about 40 foot deep, but it's right next to the Duck Creek. And all of the flood waters and all of the silt and things that came down with the flood waters produced that ranch there. MR. WRIGHT: So the Paradise District School was pretty nearly depopulated. What happened then? TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 30 MR. TOMIYASU: Well, they sold the building and then they moved us all. They told us all to go into the South Fifth Street Grammar School in Las Vegas. So I graduated the Fifth Street Grammar School in 1931. That's May of 1931, May or June. I think it was May, towards the end of May. And then the first of September, I was at Las Vegas High School. I was a freshman there then. And then my brother came on over in 1932. He graduated in 1936. And then Maymie graduated 1934, I believe it was. And Uwamie graduated about 1935 -- no '36. She graduated in 1936. And so Maymie didn't get out of Las Vegas High School until 1938, and then Uwamie didn't graduate until 1936. And then 1940, she went on to -- well 19 -- well, yeah, 1940, when she graduated from Las Vegas High School, she went to the University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois. MR. WRIGHT: And what did she study at the University of Chicago? MR. TOMIYASU: She started studying just general courses. But it wasn't too long until, two or three years after she got there, that she decided that she was going to become a doctor. She had tendencies or leanings toward becoming a doctor from way back. But she didn't know whether the family was going to be able to support her until she got that particular degree. So, anyhow, she started out in just general things TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 31 and learning. She got a job there so she could support partly, you know, her college life and so on and so forth. So, anyhow, she was there for four or five years. I think it was about five years before she got her bachelor's degree in whatever she got it in. I think it was a bachelor of arts, whatever it was. But, anyhow, by that time she had already started in on her medical assignments. So she went to Womens Medical College. MR. WRIGHT: A couple of things, I wanted to talk a little bit about the war years, but before, a couple of things I'd like to ask about first. How about religious activities? Was the family at all religious? Was the family Christian or Shinto? MR. TOMIYASU: Let me put it this way: My maternal grandfather was one of the Christian leaders in Japan. And he was up in Sendai, Japan, which is the northern part of Japan. And he was probably one of the few men that were very instrumental in establishing Christianity in Japan. Most of the people in Japan are either Buddhist or Shintos and very few Christians. But when they started embracing the Christian religion, they saw where it satisfied them a good deal more than the other religions that Japan had. When my maternal grandfather got into it, he went into it 100 percent. And he converted more people up there in the northern part of Japan or around Sendai and the immediate TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 32 environment around Sendai, which was probably, oh, I'd say, 30 or 40 miles of the center of the city, they were practically all Christians. In fact, when my wife and I went back to Japan about five years ago, there are as many Christian churches in Sendai as there are Buddhists and Shintos. You can just see them all over the place. And, apparently, I had a cousin over there that was part of the original Kawamura family. And he was telling my wife and I that the schools that my mother and her sister started, and the churches that my grandfather started, a good many of them are still there. And they're still very functional. They're still very much a community force. MR. WRIGHT: So when the family was growing up in the Las Vegas area, did you attend church then? Did the family attend church? MR. TOMIYASU: No. We were too far away from the center of town for us to get from, say, like the ranch, get into town and go to church and so on and so forth. It was just out of the question. So all the four children in my family were taught Christian. We were taught the Bible. MR. WRIGHT: And did the family grow up bilingual? Did all the children learn Japanese as well? MR. TOMIYASU: Yes. I can speak quite a bit of Japanese. In fact, I don't have any trouble in Japan speaking the language. The only thing is I can't read or write, so I TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 33 look at all the letters all over the place and tell my wife, "Read that for me." MR. WRIGHT: And when she reads it, you know. But your wife can read written Japanese? MR. TOMIYASU: Yes. But she's from Kyoto. She is originally from Kyoto. And so with her, she graduated middle school. I don't think she went to university at all. But, anyhow, she got a very liberal education in reading and writing, so she's still real good at that. MR. WRIGHT: Your father I think -- correct me if I'm wrong -- your father also did some farming down on the Colorado River, did he not? MS. MURPHY: Yes, he did. MR. WRIGHT: Can you tell me just a little bit about that, where it was? MR. TOMIYASU: He leased some land, I think it was from Updike. And Jim Cashman also had some land down there on the Colorado on Cottonwood Island. It wasn't an island at the time he was farming it because the river had gone over onto the Arizona side and left this supposed island, and it filled in with the dirt and so on and so forth, so it was an island, yes, at one time. But it was a big island. It was several hundred acres. I would say probably four or five hundred acres. And he farmed down there from about 1927, '28 through to about 1930, about four or five years. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 34 MR. WRIGHT: That's kind of an odd place, too, in a way, because Searchlight was a very small town. And where was the market there? Was it down river at Needles? MR. TOMIYASU: Right here. MR. WRIGHT: It was back up in the Las Vegas area? MR. TOMIYASU: In the Las Vegas area. He raised cabbage, ten pounds. They were humongous. The yams -- well, they didn't have so many yams in those days. It was the New Jersey sweet potato, and they were nine and 10 pounds. Watermelons were 35 and 40 pounds. Canteloupes were so big that you could only put maybe 10 or 12 or 15 to the crate. And they were just too dog-gone big. Everything was big down there. And lettuce, the same thing. And he shipped lettuce clear back to New York City. But, anyhow, the land is just really ideal down there for farming. MR. WRIGHT: It sounds like it's a very prosperous operation, the profits were fairly substantial. MR. TOMIYASU: Well, that wasn't a profitable operation because my dad could never get a manager down there that knew what he was doing and he would get out and do it. Whenever you find people working for somebody else, you work for yourself first, and then for the boss afterwards. Well, even back in the '30s it was the same way. And it was hot. The temperatures down there were 135 during the day. MR. WRIGHT: And the humidity a good deal higher. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 35 MR. TOMIYASU: And the humidity was a lot higher. It was a very rich agricultural area, but it was just you had to come up to around 4,000 feet from down at the Colorado River. It was 3,000 feet that you had to come up in 16 miles in elevation, and dirt roads, old wagon trails, rocks in the road that burst tires all the time. So it was a very unprofitable operation. And then, of course, the last manager that he had was killed by an Indian that wanted him to buy wood in July. And so this Fred Haganuma asked him, "Why do you want me to buy it now? We don't even use wood except for the cook stove." "Well, I've got to have money." "Well," he says, "I don't have any money." So the Indian went back to the camp and come on back with a pistol and shot him. But, anyhow, that stopped the whole operation. That was the last manager that my dad had, and so he pulled up all the stakes and came back up to Las Vegas. MR. WRIGHT: Would you characterize the kind of farming your father did as organic farming? MR. TOMIYASU: Yes, it was. MR. WRIGHT: And throughout the entire period that you had the farm? MR. TOMIYASU: Yes. MR. WRIGHT: Interesting. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 36 MR. TOMIYASU: The reason for it was that Vigoro, which was sold by Swift and Company, was advertised as a blood meal fertilizer. Well, it was blood meal to a certain percent, maybe 5 or 10 percent, maybe not even that much. The rest of it was red clay. And so it had hardly any fertilizing values. And so, because of that, it didn't produce any outstanding crops. It helped it, yes, but it didn't cover the cost of the fertilizer and so on and so forth. And that was the first, last, and only time that he ever bought fertilizer from Swift because they were -- he called them liars. MR. WRIGHT: Well, it sounds like that was pretty much what they were. MR. TOMIYASU: Well, that's what they were. That's what they were. But he found out that if he could get manures, horse manure, cow manure, whatever, and then use both manures along with the straw and, well, whatever they had in the feed lots -- because at one time he had the contract to clean up the stockyards for the railroad company. By this time it was Union Pacific Railroad. They had bought the Los Angeles, Salt Lake, and San Pedro. They had probably just become a part of the Union Pacific Railroad Company. Anyhow, he had the contract with them for about five years, from about 1928, '29 through 19- about '34. And he had one Indian that hauled two loads a day, 12 yards in each load, of manures and the straw and whatever they got out of the TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 37 sweepings out of each one of those cattle cars that they would feed here all night. And then the next day, they would load them back up into the cattle cars, and then they made the last trip on into Los Angeles. MR. WRIGHT: Yeah, that's another aspect I think that most modern Las Vegans wouldn't be aware of, that there was a large stockyard right downtown. MR. TOMIYASU: Oh, it was a big one. It was a big one. They could hold several hundred cows and horses, and all kind of livestock. MR. WRIGHT: So one of the prevailing smells locally must have been manure; correct? MR. TOMIYASU: Yes, it was. But everybody had horses in their own backyards and so, what the heck, manure smell, it was just another bunch of roses, you know. MR. WRIGHT: Okay. I wanted to talk, obviously, a little bit about the war years. And maybe I'll just ask a general question: How did the war impact the family's life in Las Vegas? MR. TOMIYASU: None. MR. WRIGHT: None at all? MR. TOMIYASU: We didn't have to move. The main reason was that Bill Coulthard was appointed FBI chief for the Southern Nevada area. Bill Coulthard came in here as a young attorney. He was probably only 25 when he hit town, maybe TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 38 30. I don't know. He was very, very young. And he originally went to Gene Ward. Well, by this time Gene Ward had gotten out of the grocery business because Safeway and Sewells and some of these other companies -- and then Jim McMichael had already started the Market Spot, and that was one of the bigger grocery stores here in town. Safeway was big, but it wasn't near as big as Market Spot. MR. WRIGHT: And your father was selling to the newer grocery stores as well? MR. TOMIYASU: Yes. He was selling to Safeway stores and Sewells and Market Spot, but Market Spot was by far the bigger store of all of them. But, anyhow, this was during the war years. Safeway had just moved from their place on Fremont Street, which was between Second and Third Street on the south side of the street. Well, today it would be what? The Queens Hotel? MR. WRIGHT: That would be the Four Queens, right. MR. TOMIYASU: Yeah, the Four Queens is right along in there. They had that, and then Sewells was down there at Third and Fremont on the southeast corner. I don't know what's there now, but whatever. Anyhow, then across the street was the El Portal Theatre. And next door to Sewells was Davis Jewelers, M. J. Davis. I've forgot the name, the first two letters. Anyhow, so what happened was Gene Ward ran for TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 39 sheriff, and he won. It was just a landslide. Everybody knew him. So he became sheriff. And when Bill Coulthard went to Gene Ward and asked him about the Japanese population here in Southern Nevada, Gene Ward says, "What are you worried about them for?" He says, "They've been here all these years. We don't have one criminal in the whole bunch of them, and I know them all, and they're all good people." And so he says, "If you want to meet some of them, well, let's go out and meet them." And so Bill Coulthard and Gene Ward came out to the ranch one day, and I met Bill Coulthard for the first time then. And so I asked the question: I said, "Are you planning on moving us out of here?" He says, "No. Just behave. Just turn in your contraband, your cameras, rifles." What else was it? Four or five things of contraband that they wanted in to the sheriff's office. So that's what we took on down there. And then, of course, everybody stole everything that we had down there basically. MR. WRIGHT: Oh, really? MR. TOMIYASU: Oh, yes. I had a little .22 that my dad gave me. It was a single shot .22 that he gave me when I became 15 years old. And he paid like $6 for it. MR. WRIGHT: Which was quite a bit, $6. MR. TOMIYASU: Oh, well, when I was 15, you know, TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 40 that's about 1931, '32, right in the height of the Depression. He bought it for my birthday and that never came back. But, anyhow, whatever. You know. MR. WRIGHT: So there was one local Japanese-American who did give the local authorities some concern. Was that Mr. Nagamatsu? MR. TOMIYASU: Yes. MR. WRIGHT: Was that his name? MR. TOMIYASU: He was an uncle of mine. And he wrote a letter to the Review-Journal and told them that the things that they were reporting on the Japanese-American war, that is leading up to Pearl Harbor, the things that they were writing was dead wrong; that he had information where it wasn't something that the Japanese were conceiving or the American people was conceiving; that it was coming from FDR. And so Walter V. Long, who was one of our grade school teachers, got a hold of that letter. And he wrote to the FBI, I guess, or some federal authority, and said, "Here's a guy that you need to watch." Well, they picked him up the very first night, and he never came back. They sent him from here to Missoula, Montana, and then he was up there until the war ended or just shortly before the war ended, and then they shipped him back to Japan. Well, he was a Christian reverend. And so what he TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 41 did when he got back to Japan, he started a Christian school there. And my wife and I went to the Christian school that he had started and had taught. And he had quite a big establishment by the time he died. And he died probably 15 years ago. But, anyhow, he was the only one that was picked up. MR. WRIGHT: I've read a number of newspapers, issues of local newspapers during the early years of the war, and I think they did get just a little bit inflammatory, did they not, with regard to Japanese-Americans in general, but not with regard to Las Vegas residents? MR. TOMIYASU: Well, yeah, that's right. I think I was called a Jap once, and that was it. That was one or two of the stores. We, you know, supplied the stores with all kinds of produce and everything. MR. WRIGHT: But the town was small enough, everybody knew you and had known you for years. MR. TOMIYASU: Well, everybody knew me. Everybody knew the family. And, you know, we had been here since 1916 or 1917 along in there. And, you know, I was born and raised here and went to the schools here and all of that. So, you know, we were all pretty fair students. But there was a lot of students that I knew, like, Dr. Bill Ogle, who was in my class and graduated with me in 1935, was the chief detonation expert for the AEC. They had TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 42 to clear with him on every detonation that they had of the atomic blasts up there in Mercury, down in the Marianas, and out in the South Pacific. He was the guy, and he couldn't even go to the bathroom without having a whole bunch of security police watching him every step. And so it just got to the point he was complaining to some of his mutual friends that he didn't like all of that, you know, that type of activity by all of the secret service. But then on the other hand, he says, you know, if they didn't have it, that his life might have been cut way short. But, anyhow, he was one of the products of the Las Vegas School. MR. WRIGHT: How long did the Tomiyasu farm continue to be productive then? MR. TOMIYASU: We converted back in about 1950 to tree farms. And then we got into nursery stock. It might have been about '45, '48, somewhere along in there, my dad started getting into trees, growing trees. And his first trees that he started growing in any quantity was the elm tree, the Siberian elm, which they misnamed the Chinese elm. And, of course, we still have a good number of those trees left here that my dad even planted way back in the 1950s, which is 45 years ago. MR. WRIGHT: And do you still have property in that -- MR. TOMIYASU: Well, I have property. But my dad TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 43 faced a fake foreclosure in 1960. I believe it was, 1960. Yeah, right around 1960. My mother died in 1960, and then shortly after that, they had the fake foreclosure. And it was one of these things where there was a conspiracy going here in town. They wanted that property so bad that the mortgage company was involved in it. First Interstate Bank was involved in it. It may not have been the company itself, but there was individuals within that organization that had tie-in and so on and so forth. Judge Howard Babcock had an interest in it. He got 100,000 for signing papers and all this kind of stuff. I mean, it was a half million dollars worth of property that was sold. Today it would be worth five to ten million. But, anyhow, whatever. MR. WRIGHT: But the entire property, then, was eventually sold after this? MR. TOMIYASU: Yeah. MR. WRIGHT: After the bankruptcy? MR. TOMIYASU: Well, not the bankruptcy, the foreclosure. It went through the courts twice. It went to the State Supreme Court twice, and the State Supreme Court Justices Milton Badt and Thompson was the two guys that always concurred of the three. They worked together. Now Milton Badt happened to be legal counsel for First Interstate Bank. And since Elmer Vachina was tied up with the First Interstate Bank down here, he couldn't get out there and go against First TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 44 Interstate Bank. So those two justices would get out and say, "I see no infraction of the law." And the other guy would write just below it, "I concur," and then each of them sign it, until the second time it went to the Supreme Court. And by this time, Frank McNamee -- a young man had just beat the living heck out of him because Frank McNamee was a queer. And he was a gay person, and apparently he was trying to make love to this 22-year-old kid. And this kid just said, "I'm not fooling around that way." So he just proceeded to beat him into a vegetable. And he came back here to Las Vegas, but he died here, oh, probably two or three years afterwards. But, anyhow, Frank McNamee was taken off of the Supreme Court bench. The second time it went up there to the Supreme Court, Thompson was there, Milton Badt was still there, and then so they had to have a third one. So they got Justice John Gabrielli from the Washoe County District Court system. And Gabrielli sat through the whole thing on the second time around, and he recited every point of law that Harry Claiborne had put in there that was against what they had ruled, you know, in the Supreme Court and said, after he wrote these 13 pages of opinions on the points of law, he said, you know, "I'm in the minority. The only thing I can say is recite what I know to be law, and I'm going to have to sign it. And TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 45 that's it. But the case is lost as far as the whole case is concerned. However, let it be known that this still calls for a day in court." And then he signed it. And that's the way it was left. MR. WRIGHT: What is a fake foreclosure? Was it just a matter of somebody trying to take over the property, or who initiated this whole sequence of events? MR. TOMIYASU: What happened was that my dad and I was trying to borrow about $100,000. Sixty thousand was owed to First Western Savings on a first, then my dad borrowed another 17,000 from a personal friend of his. And that's why they broke into this thing here and then effected the foreclosure. But the sequence of events that led up to that is the thing that is questionable all the way through. MR. WRIGHT: Yeah, I'm sure this is a very long story and probably a very complicated one as well as anything. MR. TOMIYASU: It is complicated, but what I'm going to try to do now -- and I've got a fairly young attorney that wants to look into it, because there's two things that they absolutely stole from my dad: Number one was the land, which was a little over a hundred acres; and then the other question is on the water rights that my dad developed and got the permanent granddad water rights on that well, Number 2303, which is the permit number for that well that he had. MR. WRIGHT: Who are the present owners of that TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 46 property and the water rights? MR. TOMIYASU: Today? MR. WRIGHT: Yeah. MR. TOMIYASU: Well, I don't know whether he's a major owner, but he owns quite a bit of that land is Tony Marnell. And Marnell Corrao, they're big, big contractors, and he also owns the Rio Hotel. MR. WRIGHT: And the water rights, they were -- MR. TOMIYASU: Water rights, see, this is the whole thing about water rights. Water rights is always granted to an individual. MR. WRIGHT: And it had to be put to beneficial use. MR. TOMIYASU: And it had to be put to beneficial use. He proved that he could put it to beneficial use because he used the water on 120 acres of land and produced crops and all worth millions. Anyhow, so what happened was that I went to the Las Vegas director of a state engineer's office and the water rights office here, and his name is Francis Thorn. And Francis told me, he says, "Hell, you haven't got a chance of a snowball in hell of getting any of that back." I said, "That isn't the way I understand water rights." "What you understand and what I'm going to tell you is what the law is." TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 47 So, anyhow, that was it. So I didn't pursue it any because we were trying to recoup. The property was taken away from us. The water rights was gone. And then since that time, that was in 19- about '65 -- '64, '65, somewhere along in there. They had to move us off. And when they moved us off, well, naturally, since they got possession of the land, well, then, they turned around and sold it. But they sold it to, well, Macayo -- Eddie Haddad, from the Macayo Vegas restaurant, bought five acres of it. Now that five acres is owned by Gary Primm of State Line. And Gary went ahead and bought another ten or 15 acres. He's got a big chunk of that land. MR. WRIGHT: So is that developed land now? MR. TOMIYASU: Yes, it is. MR. WRIGHT: So it's all developed. MR. TOMIYASU: Gary built a million dollar home on there. MR. WRIGHT: Oh, so it's primarily estate dwelling as opposed to -- MR. TOMIYASU: Well, there's no farming on it. MR. WRIGHT: No multiple-family residences? MR. TOMIYASU: No, it's all big houses. Tony Marnell has got a home over there, 37,000 square feet home. MR. WRIGHT: I could talk to you for hours but I think we're -- TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 48 MR. TOMIYASU: Okay. Well, whatever. MR. WRIGHT: But what am I missing? What haven't I asked about that could really tell us about Las Vegas or the Tomiyasu family that people out there should know? MR. TOMIYASU: We could be here for a week, eight hours a day, and then we still probably won't be able to cover all of the things that I can tell you. MR. WRIGHT: Well, you have such an extraordinary memory for names and places and times. MR. TOMIYASU: Well, there's a lot of things that I can tell you about. There's people here that I'd like to tell you about at some later day, like Frank Kim that was a lieutenant in the metropolitan police department that died here of cancer, I think prostate cancer, oh, eight, ten years ago. His dad farmed on that old Jefferson property, the Bonanza Village. He had five acres -- I don't know -- five acres, eight acres, ten acres, something like that, that he raised produce. But since he didn't have much land, he couldn't produce too much in the way of crops. But this one year, I'll just mention this one thing, Frank Kim Senior was telling my dad right downtown, he says, "You know, I've got the best Persian melons that I've ever raised anywhere." He was out of California. And his wife was a Mexico woman, so Frank Kim Junior is part Mexican and part Korean. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 49 Anyhow, so he said, "I'm going to make a couple of thousand dollars this year." Well, the May boys. This is Joe May's kids and Ernie May's kids, they were living down there around North Las Vegas, and they snuck up there one night. MR. WRIGHT: And the May boys were both policemen at a later time. MR. TOMIYASU: Well, their dads were policemen. MR. WRIGHT: Oh, their dads, oh, okay. MR. TOMIYASU: Their dads, not these kids. MR. WRIGHT: Oh, okay. MR. TOMIYASU: They were the hoodlums of the area. They went through there and punched holes in every cockeyed one of those Persian melons. And so Frank, the next time we saw him in town, which was four or five days or a week later, he was crying. He says, "I don't have anything to sell." He says, "They cut my crop up so bad that I don't have anything to sell." He says, "I don't even have a flower that I can sell." He says, "They came in there, and they just tore everything up." So, anyhow, these are things that some of the early pioneers, you know -- MR. WRIGHT: Yeah, I'd love at a later time to just go through a list of names and have you tell us a little bit. MR. TOMIYASU: Well, there's a hundred names or 200 names that I could mention, you know, and things that the TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 50 Beckleys did, you know. And these aren't bad things. They're just things that they did in the community and how the social life was like to the extent that I know how it was. MR. WRIGHT: Almost everyone that we've talked to, most of whom go back to the '30s or at least the '40s, think that Las Vegas was just a wonderful place to be. The social environment was very friendly and open and free. I take it you sort of concur in that? MR. TOMIYASU: Well, I do. I do because everyone knew everyone. And no one closed or locked their doors. You just went for days without ever locking the front door or the back door, and nobody went through the house stealing everything that you owned and all that sort of thing. Then all of a sudden, when the casinos started coming in, that's when the Mob started coming in. The Mob itself isn't bad. They were honest, as forthright of business people as you could get. MR. WRIGHT: Did you deal with them in a professional way? MR. TOMIYASU: They were very nice people. However, the friends that followed those guys around -- because they could see they could bamboozle those people into giving them 50 or $100, you know, whenever they needed it. And so these are the guys that started going into the houses and burglarizing this and stealing cars and whatever. And when TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 51 that started, that's the time the town started turning. MR. WRIGHT: So do you think the change of the last two or three decades is not necessarily a good change then by and large? MR. TOMIYASU: No, I don't. Today, you know, all of the casinos and everything, they've got more guards, security people, and all of that. They're all over the place. And they have to have them because anytime you see money stacked up anywheres, there's guys that have got honey on their hands, and they're in there to grab whatever they can grab and however they can grab it, whether it's honest, dishonest, or whatever. They don't care. Just give it to me. That's all I'm asking. MR. WRIGHT: There were, you mentioned, maybe as many as 50 Japanese families in the '30s in Las Vegas. Did they congregate together in fashion? Were there communal activities or pretty much just part of the community at large? MR. TOMIYASU: No, there wasn't that much social contact. The reason for that was that the families that were here came from different parts of Japan. And there's a lot of people that I met that looked just like me, but we didn't have a common tongue in which to talk. And the reason for that is that they have all of the idioms in Japan, and there's probably several hundred of them, just like they have over in TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 52 China. They say that in China the language changes every seven miles. MR. WRIGHT: Oh, I didn't realize it was quite that diverse. MR. TOMIYASU: It is bad. It is bad. The only people that I really know were the educated ones at University of California Berkeley, and they were Ph.D.s and agricultural, you know, and in different aspects of society. And they're the only ones you could talk to because they knew what they were talking about. Well, when this one man, he was working towards a Ph.D. in agriculture, and when he got his agricultural degree or Ph.D. degree in agriculture, he went back to China. And he says, "You know, they have an old saying in China that the language changes every seven miles." And he says, "If you go 15 miles away, if you don't know their idiom," he says, "there you are, just standing there and pointing and doing whatever you can with your hands and that's it." MR. WRIGHT: That's amazing. MR. TOMIYASU: And so what happened was the Japanese population here, the people from the northern part of Japan couldn't understand the people from the southern part of Japan. But that was starting to change by the time my mother started going to university. And she had five sisters and two brothers. There was eight in that family. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 53 And what my mother told me was that when Admiral Perry went into Japan and opened up the country, you know, for international trade, the Japanese people suddenly realized that, "Hey, what we better do is we better do two things: Number one, consolidate or get one language that we can speak and write and then communicate." And so they picked the Tokyo dialect. And everybody else had to learn the Tokyo dialect, how to write it, and, you know, how to express themselves in the Tokyo dialect. Once they had learned that, then the other thing was education. If you're not educated, you're nothing. So all of the families, then, started pressing education: Get your education. Be able to read, write, and speak before people and so on and so forth. And so that's how the country from all the idiomatic peoples, probably several hundred of them, in Japan was unified. MR. WRIGHT: Yeah, that's replicating a story, you know, that happened in many countries where there were many different dialects. Cairene became the dialect of Egyptian-Arabic, you know, that kind of thing. Many listeners will not know about the picture brides, with regard to your mother. How did those kinds of marriages develop? In the case of your parents, how did it develop? MR. TOMIYASU: Well, in my dad's instance, he was TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 54 born a Buddhist, so as far as he was concerned, when he came to the United States, he was still a Buddhist. When he got here, he met a man, Reverend Kokubun, who was a Christian reverend. And Reverend Kokubun knew Reverend Kawamura, my mother's father. They knew each other in Japan. And so, Reverend Kokubun was able to convert my dad into Christianity. He made a Christian out of him. And then he said, "What you ought to do now is start thinking about getting married and raising a family." Well, my dad says, "Well, there's no Japanese women here." There weren't. There were probably 60 percent male and then 40 percent or 25 or 30 percent -- anyhow, the difference was women. And those women were, most of them were married. They came over from Japan married, or they were picture brides and so on and so forth and then got married over here or over there and then came on over here to this country. MR. WRIGHT: So were there marriage agencies or brokerages? Would that be the appropriate word? MR. TOMIYASU: No. What my mother and dad did, they started corresponding through an introduction from Reverend Kokubun to my mother's dad. And then through that association there, they started writing to each other. My dad was a fairly prolific writer, and so he was pretty good at writing. My mother, of course, was educated in Japan, and she TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 55 was a concert pianist, and she was also a teacher. And she was high enough in education to where she could start schools where they taught the youngsters from kindergarten clear on up through, let's say, the grade schools and even into high school. But, anyhow, so they started corresponding and naturally, you know, write the likes, dislikes, and so on and so forth. And they finally decided that maybe they could make a go of it, so then they agreed to get married. And then what they do is they -- it's written in the books back there in Japan who you married, and what the family relationship is, and so on and so forth. In other words, the genealogy, that is continuous. In other words, you know what family you come from, who you married, and then the youngsters and so on and so forth. Now, once they got here to the United States, that continuity wasn't there. You could create the continuity if you wanted to, but a lot of the people here didn't. And a lot of the people that came here earlier couldn't read or write either. They could sign their checks, you know, in English so they could go down to the bank and cash it and so on and so forth. But things like that were the impediments of free intercourse of writing and expression of ideas and so on and so forth. But in my mother and dad's instance, it was quite a bit different, because both of them TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 56 were -- not that my dad was educated that much in schools, but he had a knack for reading and writing and doing a lot of things, you know, like that that enhanced his position by being able to read and write and read the newspapers and so on and so forth. And so, then, my mother, of course, because she did formally go to school, she was able to read and write. And then she and her sister started four or five schools over there. They're still in existence in Sendai. So anyhow, that's basically my background. My mother's side was practically all professional people. They were clergymen, they were business people, the school teachers and people like that. On my dad's side, it was all farmers. But then since they had so much land, they were all farmers, and they were all pretty good farmers. They raised their own cane so they didn't have to buy sugar. They, I think, produced some cotton, but, see, they didn't have the weaving equipment. So what they would do was sell all of that stuff to the weaver and then the weaver would in turn -- I don't know, what the exchange on it was. MR. WRIGHT: You mentioned your father had worked as a chef. Was that kind of a stopgap -- MR. TOMIYASU: Yes, it was. He started in there at the San Bernardino Elks Club as a gardener on the outside just TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 57 taking care of that. But he was always one that never just -- just because he was assigned the gardening duties, that he would sit on his rear-end after he got through with that and then just sit there and, you know, while the day away. So what he got into was, next thing, was that he got into the kitchen. Of course, that's where all the food is, you know. And then he started helping washing dishes and this and that and a few other things. And as time went on, in a couple of years time, well, they needed a cook. So he said, "Well, I don't know why I can't cook." So he started cooking. And then he and another friend of his that came from Japan, not at the same time, but he met this man over here. The two of them became very fast friends, and the two of them used to prepare dinners for over 300 Elks members on their big dinners. MR. WRIGHT: So did he also cook at home? MR. TOMIYASU: Yeah, he was a real good cook. So he taught -- see, my mother wasn't taught along those lines. She was a school teacher. She was a music teacher. She's an accomplished pianist. And so my young days from kindergarten on, she used to play the piano for us. There's two things I remember: Piano playing and the Bible storytelling. Those are the two things that I distinctly remember of my mother, you know, imparting her knowledge to all four of us. MR. WRIGHT: So all four of the children were TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 58 musically inclined? MR. TOMIYASU: Yes. We are musically inclined, but we don't play any instruments except the harmonica. MR. WRIGHT: Water always has been, always will be a very crucial factor here. Can you tell us again just about, you know, the water flow that was on your father's farm and the neighboring farms and how that might have changed over time and compare it to the present situation, for example? MR. TOMIYASU: The well that they drilled on my dad's ranch, Jim Pasno drilled it. He had another well there that was supposedly 600 foot deep, but it only flowed around 10 gallon a minute. So he thought, well, he'd better get another well drilled. So he went out there on the southwest corner of the property, and he put up a flag there and told Ed Von Tobel and Jake Beckley, who owned the well rig, to get out there and drill the well for him. So Beckley and Von Tobel had their Teamsters haul this big steel-wheeled rig out there, and they got stuck in the wet sand and soil about 50 foot from where the flag was. And they had horses around there for three days trying to move that rig, boarding it and, you know, so on and so forth, but they moved it something like five feet. So at the end of the third days, the driller's helper said, "Hey, we're doing this all wrong. The old man is on his run to Yermo. Why don't we go over there and just bring the flag over here and start TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 59 drilling?" Which they did. And at 293 feet, they hit this stream of water that was flowing 550 gallon a minute that flowed for 60 years. MR. WRIGHT: 550 gallons a minute seems like a whole lot of water. MR. TOMIYASU: It is a whole lot of water. It's what they call a second foot of water. In other words, a second foot means that a cubic foot of water comes out of that well every second. MR. WRIGHT: And that water was well utilized, I take it. MR. MERENDA: Oh, yes. MR. WRIGHT: I gather a lot of wells earlier on were just left to flow, and nobody paid a whole heck of a lot of attention. MR. TOMIYASU: There was a lot of wells. For instance, McGriff had two wells also. One was an absolute dry hole. So, then, McGriff thought, "Well, I bought the land, now I've got to have water," because he was an orchardist. And he was a graduate of Purdue University in orchard husbandry. Anyhow, he had some orchards in Utah for a little bit. It wasn't to his liking. I don't know whether -- he wasn't a Mormon. And so, anyhow, he came to Las Vegas and they bought the old Wixom ranch. And when he bought the Wixom TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 60 ranch, it had this one dry hole. And then he thought "Well, I can't have a dry hole, you know, then try to raise apricots and grapes and cherries and all that sort of thing." So, he hired this driller to drill the well for him. And, like they always did in the early days, the men working for you, you had to feed them lunch because there was no McDonald's out there in those days. What they did was they called all of the men in for lunch, and they were in there eating, and Mrs. McGriff fixed a nice dinner for them. And one of the driller's helpers finished early, so he stepped out of their farmhouse and stepped in a whole bunch of water. And he come flying back into the house. He said, "You ought to see the amount of water we got out there." And he had a flow that flowed better than 500 gallons a minute. And it blew in during the lunch hour. Now, the part that really amazes me is that McGriff was telling the driller, "You better quit now because I don't have any more money to pay you for the rest of the day." And the driller says, "We're here. We'll finish out the day, whatever it is, and then we'll stop." Well, they didn't have to stop because the well blew in during the lunch hour. MR. WRIGHT: Amazing. If you were to go out there in that same general area, dig down 290, 300 feet, would you still hit that gusher of water? MR. TOMIYASU: No. All of the waters, the artesian TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 61 flows that we have in this area geologically comes from alluvial fans. And those fans start up in the Red Rock Canyon area, wherever there's a little channel and the water comes, the flood waters and all of that come, the rain waters come down, and then they come out and they produce these alluvial fans. We have about five or six of them going from the south end over there around Blue Diamond and then going clear on over to Nellis Air Force Base. And they have found that at the toes of these fans that they can hit a lot of artesian water. But the period of time that it flows can be anywheres from a year to ten years to 20 years to 50, 60 years, and then they peter out because those aquifers are just filled with water over a period of centuries. And whenever you tap it, well, then whatever that aquifer has in the way of water, it will produce. Now, the well that my dad had, toward the last it was down around 200 gallon a minute. But still it was a substantial amount of water. MR. WRIGHT: I've read that right around 1945, '46, the state engineer was saying, "You folks down there are going to run out of water." All the wells were coming up dry or a lot of the city wells were coming up dry at that point. MR. TOMIYASU: Yeah. When I was a kid and was riding horses throughout the valley, and I'm talking about Paradise Valley, there must have been 25 or 30 wells that was flowing. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 62 They were flowing wells. They flowed anywhere from five gallons to ten gallons a minute to maybe 50 or 60 gallons a minute, and that was it. There was nothing as spectacular as my dad's well or McGriff's well. But then in 1944, I drilled a well for Henry Wick. He was the man that started American Standard Sanitary in Elyria, Ohio. And when he graduated from, I think he said it was Yale, Yale or Cornell, his dad gave him $50,000 and told him, "Take that 50,000. That's all I'm going to give you. Take that 50,000 and see what you can do with it." So he went out there and he started this American Standard sanitary. And then in 1943, '44 he sold that company to a group for 15 million. And then he moved to Palm Springs. And then he was looking for a place to put his money. He had plenty of money in the bank, but, you know, no properties, nothing. In other words, the money was just sitting in the bank and drawing whatever little interest it might be drawing. So he came up to Las Vegas, and he bought half of the Fox properties there on the north side of Warm Springs and today's Paradise Road. And then he had one of the guys drill a well for him. Pat Thompson was one of them. Pat drilled a 600-foot hole. And Pat, in those days, wasn't too reliable. He liked to spend his money too well. He was a young guy, you know. He was married, but he was playing around all over town and TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 63 everything. So money went in one pocket and went right to the bar or the grocery store, and it was always being spent. So he drilled the first well, 600 feet for $900. So, since I was in charge of the money, Mr. Wick told me, "Be sure that you don't pay him for any more than he's got coming." Pat was always having problems with his equipment constantly breaking down. He never had enough money to get in there and buy a good piece of equipment, that is, you know, a good motor, a good whatever. So, anyhow, he was constantly breaking down. So he was always coming to me for a $10 bill, a $20 bill, a $50 bill or whatever to buy parts. Well, he told me this one morning, he came on down to the ranch, and he said, "I finished the well." "Well," I said, "Pat, I can't give you the rest of the money," which he only had about 150, $200 coming. "I'm going to have to measure the well with you and make sure that you've got 600 foot drilled." He said "Well, there's no problem." So we went on over there, and we kept dropping the bit and everything down into the hole. Then wherever it struck bottom, we marked it and then we started measuring. And he had actually drilled 603 foot. So he was honest, but then when the drill and the cable and everything was almost out of the hole the engine conked out on him. So, anyhow, we paid him. We paid him all right. TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 64 They tried to get the water, you know, to stay there so that they could use it for commercial, you know, that is domestic use. Well, the Indians had used it for years and years and years because we went over that sand dune and right by the spring -- when I was a kid, and we went up through there with these old Model T Fords, and we found bits of arrows. In fact, we found a lot of good arrows, arrow heads, and the bottom of these baskets that they wove with the western willows. And they apparently had a fire, and they burnt everything out except the bottom. So we picked up hundreds of pieces of bow and arrows and parts, all kinds of stuff. MR. WRIGHT: By the way, I just interviewed with the Japanese newspaper, Asa-Asahi Shinbum, over the last weekend. They're doing an article about Las Vegas, and we went into the history gallery at the museum. And, of course, we have imagines there of atomic testing and how the city used that for publicity purposes and so on. Was there any feeling among the Japanese community about atomic testing given the heritage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Was there any special feeling for the testing itself? MR. TOMIYASU: Well, those reactions came after the bombs were dropped. Up until that time they had no idea how they were going to use those atomic bombs. MR. WRIGHT: But, I mean, in terms of the testing, TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 65 after the test site was developed and atomic testing began here in the 1950s, were there any particular objections or sensitivities with regard to atomic testing among the Japanese-Americans of Las Vegas? MR. TOMIYASU: No. They weren't right up front on that. They were way in the background. The only thing we relied on, basically, was what we read in the newspapers or what we could see up there at Mercury and that was it. But I have made several remarks that the type of construction that we're doing today here, if they should drop two or three of those big atomic bombs above ground, in other words, have them go on up and detonate it on the surface and then the mushroom go up there and all of the sound waves and all of that coming down through here, two-thirds of these houses would be blown down. MR. WRIGHT: A happy thought. I think we've got to pretty much wrap it up, and we're about out of tape. I think it's been wonderful, thank you so much. MR. TOMIYASU: You're welcome. MR. WRIGHT: We appreciate it. (End of tape.) TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 66 * * * * * ATTEST: The foregoing transcript of the interview was transcribed fully and accurately from the audio tape provided by KNPR Radio. Eunice G. Jones, Transcriptionist TRIPLE J STENO - 702-648-5584 3420 EDGEHILL WAY, NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA 89030 ??