<Begin Segment 1>

TI: What's the date today? It's May...

Tani Ikeda: The 17th.

TI: 17th, 2012, Thursday. We're in San Jose at the Japanese American Museum of San Jose. On camera is Tani Ikeda, and I'm the interviewer, Tom Ikeda. And so Yosh, I'm gonna start with just a basic question. Can you tell me when you were born and where?

YU: Okay, I was born in Calexico, California, on April 1, 1920.

TI: And what was the name given to you at birth?

YU: Yoshihiro Uchida.

TI: And any significance to Yoshihiro?

YU: Well, my mother said that it was a good name. She said that Yoshi was after a warrior named Yoshi, Yoshi... I forgot. And Hiro is a wise man or a professor.

TI: So April 1, 1920, so you're ninety-two years old.

YU: That's right.

TI: Just recently turned ninety-two.

YU: I remember now, Yoshitsune, that was a warrior during the, during the feudal days.

TI: So this, kind of this warrior, but also this other side.

YU: The warrior, wise.

TI: Okay. And Calexico, I'm not familiar with that. Where is that located?

YU: Calexico is on the border of California and Mexico, and that's where my dad was farming. And so I guess it's called Calexico, and very few people know about it, except that that's what it says on my birth certificate. [Laughs]

TI: So I get it, so it's like a combination of California and Mexico.

YU: And Mexico, right. Right on the border.

TI: Right on the border. So you mentioned your father. Tell me your father's name and where he was from.

YU: His name is Shikazo Uchida, and he, both he and my mother are from, well they were from Kumamoto-ken.

TI: And how did the two of them meet?

YU: I think they were from the same village, and I think it was through a picture bride -- not picture bride but in the, what would you say? Like introduction.

TI: Like an arranged kind of marriage.

YU: Yeah, arranged, they were arranged, yes.

TI: So tell me why your father decided to come to America?

YU: Well, I found out that they were very poor, and as you know, in the Japanese family the oldest inherits everything. And there're about eight in the family, and the last three or something like that, they just said, "Well, you guys better do something." And so that's why they came to America, three of the brothers came together.

TI: Interesting. So the three youngest ones, essentially, because they had, the older ones had all the land or all the other...

YU: Yeah, the oldest one had the land, so they were...

TI: So they went together. And do you know about when they came to America?

YU: The closest I can figure out, talking with my mother, they were about 1898 or somewhere in that era.

TI: Good. So let's go to your mother. What was your mother's name?

YU: My mother's name was Suye, S-U-Y-E, Itoh, I-T-O-H.

TI: And tell me about her family. What did they do in Japan?

YU: Well, she was adopted, and her parents had died early and so she was adopted by the, her cousin or uncle or someone. And she didn't do much except work on the farm for these people. And she didn't, she said that she didn't, didn't get a chance to go to school or anything because they were all so poor.

TI: Okay. And do you know about when she came to America?

YU: She came in the early part of 1900.

TI: Okay, so early 1900s.

YU: Yeah.

TI: So your father came with his two brothers, and they were, sounds like they were farming.

YU: Right.

TI: And then he and your mother, they were kind of an arranged marriage, and then she came over.

YU: That's right.

TI: Do you know if your father went to Japan to marry her, or did she just come?

YU: No, she came by boat.

TI: Okay. So let's talk about your siblings. You were born in 1920 in Calexico. Tell me about your siblings, in terms of your oldest to youngest.

YU: My oldest brother is Sam, or Isamu, and he was five years older than myself. And then my sister, Kazuko, she's about three years, two to three years older than myself, and then I was in the, right in the middle. And then my younger brother, Henry, he was born in about 1923, I believe, and then George was, my youngest brother, was born in 1925 in Uplands, California.

TI: Wow, so four boys and one girl.

YU: That's right.

TI: So lots of boys. And I'm curious about your father's brothers. Did they have families also?

YU: Yes, they had families, and they lived, the family lived, all of 'em lived right together. And then in 1918 the World War I, well it had started earlier, but it ended in 1918, and during the war they had a dairy farm and they made cheeses and they made, sold milk, and apparently they did very well, so that in 1920, right after I was born, they decided that they wanted to go to, back to Japan because, one reason was that Imperial Valley, there's hardly any Japanese there and it's very isolated. So they thought they would go to Japan, and so they all sold the dairy and they went back to Japan.

TI: Well, so all three brothers?

YU: All three.

TI: Okay, so your father and the two brothers went back to Japan.

YU: Right.

TI: And so took the families with them?

YU: Took the family, right.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 2>

TI: Okay, so after you were born you went to Japan.

YU: Japan.

TI: Okay. And then what happened in Japan?

YU: Well, my dad apparently decided that there was, he helped to get the farm and everything fixed up, I guess, and the home and everything. Yeah, so they started to look a little bit comfortable, and then my dad decided that that was not for him, so he decided to come back to United States. He left Japan and came back.

TI: I'm curious, when the three brothers returned to Japan, how did the rest of the family perceive them? I mean, did they come back as kind of the successful...

YU: They were received in that manner, that they were successful people that had gone out and made something of themselves. That is, that's what I hear.

TI: But then your father wanted to return to...

YU: He wanted to return to, he fixed up the family home and I think they bought a few acres around there, and so it made him look like a prosperous farmer.

TI: But he decided to move away from that? I mean, he had all that...

YU: He, but he decided that, after being in United States, he decided he wanted to come back and start all over again.

TI: How about his two other brothers?

YU: There was, his immediate brother came back with him, a younger brother came back with him, and the other did not come back.

TI: Okay. So when they returned to California, where did they go?

YU: They came back, first they landed in, I came with them, with my, not with my father but with my mother right after, and we landed in Tacoma, Washington. And from Washington, we came down to a place called Uplands, California, and that's by Pomona.

TI: Right.

YU: And he started a farm there.

TI: I'm curious, why was your point of entry Tacoma, Washington and not maybe Los Angeles or San Francisco?

YU: That is, that is something we, I've always wondered, because people have asked, said, "Well, didn't you come to Angel Island or San Francisco?" But I have not heard of any Japanese going to Angel Island. Most of everybody that I heard of went to Tacoma, Washington, whether it was because the country was supposed to go to Tacoma and the Chinese ships went to Angel Island, I don't know.

TI: Yeah, in the Northwest, Tacoma was a big entry point, but Seattle was also. People landed in Seattle, and also Port Townsend was another. Those were the three places that I hear about.

YU: Is that right?

TI: And I think earlier was more Port Townsend, but yeah, there was those three main places.

YU: But everybody I talk with said that it was Tacoma, Washington.

TI: Okay. But then you went to Uplands. For you, what, where were you when you had your first, like, childhood memories? Do you remember the Uplands? Or where was it?

YU: Well, I remember coming up, coming on the ship, and we were on the ship about twenty or thirty days, they said something like thirty days, but I had no idea. And the only thing I remember about it is my mother would say, yeah, go in and ask the stewardess, I guess, to see if we can have some hot water. And so I would go get some hot water in a pail and bring it back to her, so that's all I remember about the ship. And I don't even remember too much about getting to Tacoma, except that I had some apples that were given to me. [Laughs]

TI: And how old were you when you...

YU: I was four years old.

TI: Boy, that's still young. That's, that's...

YU: Four years. But the reason we came at that time was because of the Oriental Exclusion Act that was put in. In July you had to be, be here by either July 30th or July 1st or something like that, so we came on the ship to Tacoma.

TI: Because you had, your younger brother Henry, was he born in Japan?

YU: Yeah, he was born in Japan, but according to his birth certificate he was born in Calexico. So I think things were done a lot, well, screwy, you might say, and I guess you could register. Because midwives took care of a lot of the births, and sometimes they didn't register for a long time, so maybe that's what they told my, or my father told the registrar. So he's, he was registered as an American-born citizen.

TI: Okay. Interesting. So your father, your parents, decided it would be better for him to have a U.S. citizenship, then.

YU: That's right.

TI: For him to do that. Did you ever ask him why they did that?

YU: No. [Laughs] Actually, if I, if we were there probably a little older, there was a lot of questions we could've asked 'em.

TI: No, it's interesting because, so it sounds like your parents really were thinking that in the future California was gonna be their home. That, because if they thought they would return to Japan they might've, it might've been better for Henry to have been born in Japan.

YU: I think they came with the idea that this was gonna be permanent here.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 3>

TI: Okay, so after the Uplands, where did your father go? I have on my notes that you really grew up in Garden Grove.

YU: George was born in Uplands, and then from there we moved to, toward Garden Grove. It's in Orange County.

TI: And why did he move? What was the --

YU: Well, I guess for the farming, and there was, I guess the soil in the Uplands area was not conducive to growing vegetables, so we grew melons and things like that. And I guess they felt that growing vegetables would be better than melons.

TI: And at this point did your father continue doing things with his brother? Was his brother along, or did he go someplace else?

YU: No, my brother --

TI: Not your brother, his brother.

YU: His brother, his brother went back to Calexico area and started a dairy farm.

TI: Okay. So your father really kind of tried something different, then.

YU: Yes, right.

TI: So what are some early memories of Garden Grove for you, when you think about Garden Grove, growing up?

YU: Well, Garden Grove was an area where it was all, practically, lemons and orange, mostly oranges, and we started a farm and started growing vegetables there. And I was, started grammar school, elementary school there in a little, small school. I think we went from first, second, third, fourth, I think the oldest one in there was fifth grade, a fifth grader, but we were all in one room.

TI: So the old classic one-room schoolhouse.

YU: Right.

TI: And in that school, how many other Japanese were there?

YU: I was the only one.

TI: And what were the other races in the, in your class?

YU: They were all Caucasians.

TI: And in general, what, the family that sent their kids to that school, were they also farmers, or did they do other types of things?

YU: I'm not sure if they were all farmers. I think most of 'em were citrus growers.

TI: So you're the only Japanese at this school. Was there a very large Japanese community in Garden Grove?

YU: No, there was not.

TI: So growing up, were there, how about things like Japanese language school, did, was that something that you and your brothers and sister had to do?

YU: We didn't, we didn't have any Japanese schools there. My brother and sister, they were not brought with me or with Henry, because they were left there in Japan.

TI: So growing up, you were kind of the oldest, then?

YU: I was the oldest, right.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 4>

TI: Well, so in my notes I have that when you were about ten is when you were first introduced to judo.

YU: Yes.

TI: Was this in Garden Grove?

YU: Yeah, well Garden Grove, Westminster, Stanton, the cities were all close together, and we had a Japanese school that was in Stanton.

TI: Okay. So not in Garden Grove, but it's kind of like --

YU: Well, we did have a Garden Grove too, Japanese school, but that one, we went, we did go to Garden Grove, that, but maybe it's a little mixed up here, but went to Garden Grove grammar school and then later on we went to Stanton Japanese.

TI: Okay. And so so you did take Japanese language also, or Japanese --

YU: We went to Japanese school, yes.

TI: Okay. And then tell me about being introduced to judo. What was the class like? Was it a dojo, or how did they do judo?

YU: There was a dojo that was built with sawdust and canvas covering, and we were introduced to judo there.

TI: And at this age, what were your thoughts or impressions about judo? Was this something that you were interested in?

YU: Well, it was something different, fun. And we were not really allowed to do much except we dressed up, we watched our older brothers practice judo, and then after they went in to get dressed and things we'd tumble around with our friends.

TI: Okay. But, so you started off, you were one of the younger ones, but then over time you became, I guess, one of the older ones over, as you went every year? Is that how it worked?

YU: Yeah. As time went on we got, really took it up more and competed in tournaments and things like that.

TI: Now, at a young age, did you show a strong aptitude for judo? Was this something that people noticed that you would be good at judo?

YU: No. I enjoyed judo, and people my age, my size, we were, we would compete against each other and they would beat me and I'd beat them next time, and so that's how we grew up. Never that I'm superior to you or anything like that.

TI: So at this early age, did you ever, did it ever occur to you that judo would become a really large part of your life?

YU: No, it never occurred to me.

TI: Okay. How about school? If one of your friends or a teacher were to describe you as a student, how would they describe you?

YU: I would say that they would probably say, "He was a good student, didn't get into trouble. Everything, all assignments, he completed."

TI: And when you got into, like, high school, how about sports? Did you participate in sports?

YU: Yes. In high, I could hardly wait until I got in high school so that we could play football or basketball, tennis, and things like that.

TI: And so did you, like football, what position did you play?

YU: I played a position, fullback. Today, when you say fullback people don't know too much what they, what you're talking about, halfback or anything like that because they're all backfield or quarterback's the only one. But at that time we had two halfbacks, a fullback, and a quarterback. And the full, we played on what was called the Pop Warner system, and under Pop Warner's system you had the two halfbacks on both sides and the quarterback was in the back, and the fullback was right behind the center. So I was small and I had a friend, his name was Tom Sullivan, he was about six feet one or so and fairly large, hundred and eighty-five pounds, so he played center. And so the coach says, "Okay, we'll devise a play for Yosh. It'll be called Yosh X, and whenever we need one yard or a half yard we would send Yosh in, and the center will lunge, give the ball to Yosh, and the center would lunge forward and Yosh would follow him and pick up the half yard or one yard needed for first down." So that was, that was a kind of play that we had, and it was fun. I never got hurt because the guys in front of me always hit the linebackers.

TI: So this is interesting, so the fullback would kind of be standing where kind of the quarterback --

YU: Quarterback today, right.

TI: But then, when you would stand there in a normal play, would the ball then be hiked to the quarterback or would it...

YU: No, it would be hiked to me, 'cause I'm right behind him. And he would, instead of passing it to me fast he would just give it to me, and I would get the ball and I would just, then he would lunge forward and I would follow him, and we would pick up a half a yard or one yard.

TI: Okay. Now, when they didn't call the Yosh X play, what would normally happen?

YU: Well, that's when we needed the one yard.

TI: Right, right. But when they didn't need -- I'm just curious about how football worked back then. So would the football be more like a shotgun in the, in the...

YU: Well, they did that too, but one of the reasons that I would not get called in is because maybe we're, we needed five yards, and they knew that we would never get the five yards.

TI: Yeah. But then the other team, whenever they see you come in, they'd know that the Yosh X play was being called. [Laughs]

YU: Well, they didn't have that kind of scouting. [Laughs]

TI: Okay. When you were in high school, did you still continue with judo? Is that something that you were still doing?

YU: We, I did a little bit. Not as much, intensely, but I did continue some, yes.

<End Segment 4 - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 5>

TI: So you go to Garden Grove Elementary, then you go to high school, after you graduate from high school where did you, what did you do?

YU: I went to Fullerton Junior College for a year and a half.

TI: So this is about...

YU: 1938.

TI: '38. And what were you thinking when you went to college? What did you want to do?

YU: Well, I wasn't thinking too much, but I thought that maybe I'd become a petroleum engineer or something like that, and then that will send me into different parts of the world, like Sumatra or to Middle East or someplace away from the United States.

TI: Wow, so you, at a young age you wanted to travel. You wanted to see the world.

YU: I wanted to see the, I thought there would be a lot of future in the area that has still been unexplored.

TI: Interesting. So petroleum engineer, I mean, when I went to school they would call these chemical engineers, is that kind of...

YU: Right, right, chemical engineer.

TI: 'Cause I actually got my degree in chemical engineering.

YU: Is that right?

TI: So I was recruited by the petroleum industry, people like Chevron, Exxon, people like that. So that's... but it's interesting that you wanted to see the world when you're that age. So you finished Fullerton Junior College?

YU: No, I didn't finish Fullerton Junior College, because I was getting tired of it and it was -- not tired, but I said, well, it looks like we weren't gonna get anyplace. Because we look around all over and all the Nikkei graduates from UC Berkeley, UCLA, USC, they're all working in the fruit stand, and nobody was -- there's a fellow from Cal Tech that graduated with honor as an aeronautical engineer, and they wouldn't even hire him. So I said, "Maybe we're on the wrong track." And then a, I had a Caucasian friend who said, who was out for wrestling and I sort of fumbled around in this, and he said, "You know, Yosh, you farm tomatoes?" And I said, "No." He says, "I think there's a lot of money in tomatoes." I said, "Oh yeah? How do you figure?" And he said, "Well, they do real well on hillside farming." So I said, "I don't know anything about hillside farming." "Well, I know an area that's in Whittier Heights," he says, "we could grow tomatoes." I said, "Okay, tell me about it." So we went to look at Whittier Heights, and this is, it's real, on the hillside, he says, "I can lease that, about two or three acres of it." "So how much do we have to pay?" He says it's cheap, and I said okay, so he, so it was no problem. "So how do we work this?" He says, "You know, Yosh, the tomatoes coming out of San Diego, Mexico ends about end of May. All the tomatoes are gone at end of May, coming in from Mexico." He says, "The San Diego," I think he said, "The San Diego tomatoes start about middle of, middle of June or first part of July. We have about a two to three week window, and if we can get the tomatoes out between, in that three weeks, we can make the money." I said, "That sounds interesting." So we went out and got some plants. Course, we had a lot of helpers, strawberry helpers, they worked, they lived on the ranch. And so I told my dad about it and he says, well, he didn't think it was a good idea, but if we wanted to, yeah. So I borrowed his workers and we went back in there and planted tomatoes. Well, we didn't know enough about tomatoes -- that is, I didn't know enough and this fellow (Jerry) Young didn't know enough about tomatoes. So it has to be done right, but we didn't know anything about hillside farming, and you're supposed to, to get tomatoes you're supposed to take some blossoms off. You can't let all the blossoms flower. So they flowered, and when the tomatoes came out they were very small tomatoes, so we couldn't sell them because it had to be fairly large. But they were small tomatoes, so we lost money on that thing. So this fellow, Young, says, "Well Yosh, I guess we better quit the farming and try something else." And I said, "I'm gonna go to USC, get my dentist, a dental degree," and start dentistry. I said, "What are you gonna do?" He says, "I don't know." Said, "Maybe I'll think about it, maybe I'll go, but I'm gonna go back to school." So that's how it ended in, I guess, 1939, 1940 or something like that.

TI: That was a pretty, I guess, entrepreneurial thing for you to do at a young age, to take this on.

YU: Well, there was, then, but it was something that I thought maybe we could do. But then I thought, after that I went back to the farm and I was picking strawberries, and in the morning I go out to pick the strawberries and the dew would be on there and there'd be, mosquitoes would fly out and they would sting me, and I was always sort of allergic to mosquitoes anyway, and it would give me a, start a big welt on my hands, face, and I said -- and about ten o'clock at, ten to 10:00, 10:30, 11:00, it would just get hot and the sun would beat on your back and everything -- and I said, "I got to find something to do." So my roommate, who lived about, about a mile away from me, and he was in a, his parents had a grocery store, and they said, "Yosh, why don't you think, why don't we get together and go to school?" I said, well, the only thing we knew at that time was UC Berkeley or UCLA, and I said, "Where do you want to go, UCLA or Berkeley?" He says, "No, I don't want to go to Berkeley." "Why not?" He said, "My brother goes to Berkeley, so I don't want to go there." Says, "UCLA, well, it's too close to home." I said, "Alright, where shall we go, then?" "Hey, there's a place called San Jose State Teacher's College." "I don't want to be no teacher." Says, "No, no, no. You don't have to take teaching. You can do whatever you want. They got different kind of courses." So we got a booklet, and they had just changed the name from San Jose State Teacher's College to San Jose State College, so we said, "Hey, let's go up there." And he says, "Yeah, they got a pretty good football team too." So I said, "That's real interesting. Let's go." Of course, we weren't, we weren't gonna play football, but we went and we came here, and I think I got accepted about two weeks before I came up here in September. And I had no, I had applied late and everything, but it didn't matter. I just had confidence that they'll accept me. [Laughs]

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 6>

TI: So I'm curious, when you're doing all these things, thinking about the tomato business, school choices, how much advice did you get from your parents?

YU: They thought it was a dumb... why don't I go to UCLA or... "You quit Fullerton Junior College and now you want to go to some school up north?" They thought I -- and said, "Besides," he said, "when you graduate you're gonna be selling vegetables in a fruit stand or something like that." I said, "No, I'm not gonna be doing that." So we went to San Jose State in 1940.

TI: But when your parents would say this, would they kind of... I guess, how persuasive were they? I mean, did they just kind of give you advice? Or did they say --

YU: They said, "We're not gonna send you any money."

TI: Okay, so they were actually, so you had to, you were pretty headstrong in terms of going your own way.

YU: Yeah, I said, okay, in that case I figure I can find a job and work. And looking around and talking with someone, they said, "Oh yeah, what do you do?" I said, "I'm a schoolboy and I, do they have a lot of jobs like that?" He says, "Oh yeah, you can find schoolboy jobs and work during the daytime," not daytime but in the morning, get things ready, and then in the evenings you get home earlier, and then on weekends you clean the house. So I said, "Okay, well, I think I can make it." So that's how we came up here."

TI: And going back to your parents, tell me a little bit about your, first your father. What kind of personality did your father have?

YU: Well, my dad didn't have too much education, and so one of the things that they, he says, well, we should go to, we should have education to get anything accomplished. And my mother was very strong about that. They would say, "Okay, look at us." He says, "We don't have an education and we don't, we can't do anything. So you must." All my, my brothers and sisters. "You must have an education to grow out of all of this misery, or you might say the kind of life that we are living. If you have education, you can get out of this."

TI: And when they said education, did that mean college education or high school?

YU: They meant school and then go to college. But they also said you have to really be serious about going, otherwise you're not gonna, you're not gonna get anyplace.

TI: Okay. So you decide to come to San Jose State College, so tell me what you found when you came to San Jose. What was it like?

YU: Well, I found the campus to be real small, and there's only about three thousand students, and it seemed to me that you get to know a lot of people and it was a friendly school, nothing serious. And we, for recreation, we didn't have too much money so we would go to football games on Friday nights and maybe a movie downtown on Saturday nights. And that was the extent of our recreation.

TI: And when you say "we," who were your friends?

YU: My roommate. His name was Tak Tashima.

TI: Good. And this is, what, about 1940?

YU: 1940, and then into 1941.

TI: Okay, any other activities that you did? So it was mostly school, then working?

YU: I did, I was on the wrestling team, just horsing around, nothing serious. But it turned out to be something that I'm glad I was in a the time, because I got to know a lot of people and made friends with important people.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 7>

TI: So Yosh, let's go to, so right now we have you at San Jose State College.

YU: Right.

TI: And you were going to school there, but let's jump to December 7, 1941. Can you describe that day for me? What happened to you on that day?

YU: Well, it was a Sunday, and here in California I think it was about ten o'clock, so we got up late, on Sunday we sort of got out late and we would help, say, "Well, when shall we start cleaning the rooms?" And they said, "Well, let's wait. We're, the sun's out." It was a beautiful day. The sun was coming in, and we just sat there and I think we were listening to the radio. Then all of a sudden there was a flash and we're, had just, have a flash news. It says, so we listen, and... well, actually we really didn't listen too closely. All of a sudden says, "We have report that Pearl Harbor was bombed." So my roommate and I, we looked at each other, says, "Did you hear that?" Said, "Yeah." "Pearl Harbor, where the heck is Pearl Harbor?" And so we pulled out a magazine or book or something to look where Pearl Harbor, "Hey, that's, I think it's in Hawaii." He says, "Yeah, it is Hawaii. Now, who the hell would bomb Pearl Harbor?" So we said, "Can't be the Japanese." And so we said, "Well, who else would?" Then all of a sudden, yes, the Japanese planes have bombed Pearl Harbor, and we said, "Oh my god." That was about the only thing we could say, and we just got glued to the radio and listening. And we didn't have too many friends around, so we didn't make any phone calls or anything like that, we just sat there, glued to the radio. And then later in the afternoon we got more news. As the news came in, we got straightened that the Japanese had actually bombed. We said, "Well, what's gonna happen now?" Says, "We don't know." And I think all, we got together down in Japantown here. Right over there, there's a, there's a family here, Nakano I think, the dentist, he was from Hawaii and he had a couple of daughters that also attended San Jose State. And so we came down and we sat around, talked about it, and nobody had any answer as to what was gonna happen. And then we went home. Next day we went to school, and the president of the university stood before the assembly and told us that this has happened and that, "We want, it's going to mean war, and we want all of you people to be ready. And we know that you're gonna be called away soon." The San Jose State football team also was at Hawaii at the time, so the news, the things were a little more intense on the university because here they had the whole football team and they weren't coming back from the way things sounded, because at that time they came by ship, so they were afraid of the ship being torpedoed.

TI: So was there any mention of what would happen to Japanese American students at San Jose?

YU: There was no, nothing said. But everything was quiet, and friends that we had, Caucasian friends, like on the judo team and everything, we, they, we were treated well. They didn't say "get away from the Japs" or something like that. It was just... so as time went on, there were all kinds of rules came out that we couldn't leave our, our apartments or home, and that... it was a one mile radius or something like that.

TI: Yeah, it was like, I think maybe five mile, five mile kind of...

YU: Right, five miles. Anyway --

TI: And the 8:00 pm curfew.

YU: Curfew, right. So, well, I think we figured -- one or two miles anyway -- it was about one mile from school to here, so we used to come in and talk with friends in there. I do remember going to Norm's place -- of course, he was a little boy -- with his, talking with his brother Albert, and he would invite us over. And Mr. Mineta would say that, well, I don't know... I'd say, "What's gonna happen?" Says, "We don't know." And there was also a fear that the Japanese were going to invade, invade... and there was all kinds of news on there. Plus, okay, how do you identify the Japanese, difference between Japanese and Chinese?

TI: Yeah, all of those things. I wanted to ask, during these days right after, the FBI was picking up sort of Japanese with martial arts kind of backgrounds, like kendo, was that happening also in the judo community, that, were judo instructors --

YU: Right, yeah, judo, well mostly they were picking up teachers and people that were prominent in the Japanese community. Maybe like a schoolteacher or a Buddhist priest, somebody that, Japanese association president, somebody that stood out, and usually those people had, were the only one that had education about Japan. The rest of 'em were, we were dirt farmers.

TI: But how about in the judo community, like the judo instructors? Didn't they also have kind of that knowledge and background?

YU: Yeah, they had that, but a lot of that happened after, after they got into their, the camps.

TI: Okay. So in the days after Pearl Harbor, they weren't picked up. It was later on.

YU: Some people were picked up, but not...

TI: Okay. You talk about, it sounds like even though you were from Garden Grove, more southern California, the San Jose Japanese American community accepted you pretty well. It seemed like you were welcomed.

YU: Yeah, we were pretty well, not assimilated but we were, in a way, had neighbors and things friendlier. They, like you would say, like, somebody would live next door to a Caucasian and they lived in, and they were very friendly, exchanged gifts and things like that. So they didn't feel that uncomfortable. But some of the farms way down in Alviso here, they had people shoot into them.

TI: Okay, interesting. But in San Jose it wasn't like that as much.

YU: No, it was not. The shooting was usually not by, by Caucasians. It was by other Asians.

TI: Okay.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 8>

TI: How about your parents during this time? Did you communicate with your parents and what they were gonna do, or anything happening?

YU: No, they, they had no idea that anything like that evacuation would take place. So they had this in their mind that, like during World War I things went, things went, what would you say, sky high.

TI: The prices of...

YU: Price of the things that they, cheeses and milk and things.

TI: So they were thinking that this is gonna be a, possibly an opportunity.

YU: An opportunity to do well. And so they, like in strawberries and things they had grown, and they were, they said, "Oh, we're gonna have lots of strawberries this year. We should be doing well." So that's, that's...

TI: Interesting. Yeah, so they were, having gone through World War I, they thought this was gonna be another great opportunity because of the war.

YU: That's right.

TI: And at any point did they want you to come back to Garden Grove from San Jose?

YU: No, they didn't say anything like that. But then, of course, during the Christmas time, we, I decided to, my roommate decided to, we both decided to go back to southern California, and at that time we had no transportation because we were, couldn't go, like you said, more than five miles out of the area. But I had a very good friend that was in the wrestling team -- his name was Dave Heines -- and he said, "Hey, Yosh, are you going back home?" I say, "I'm trying, but there's no transportation." He says, "I'll take you." And so he had a Ford, and we hopped on and made it down to -- and he went to visit his sisters while we visited the parents, and then he...

TI: Okay. And when you saw your parents and family, any stories about, that affected them?

YU: Well, they were, told us about So-and-so got pulled in by the FBI. Usually they were people that had served as Japanese American association... not Japanese American, Japanese association.

TI: So community leaders.

YU: Community leaders, they're the ones that got pulled in.

TI: Good. And then, after the holidays, did you come back to San Jose?

YU: I came back, but by that time I knew that I was gonna, I got the draft notice, so I said, "Okay, I will, I guess we'll have to go back." And I left my roommate at State because he didn't get any notice.

TI: Now, when you got your draft notice, were you surprised that they were drafting you?

YU: I was very much surprised that I got a draft notice, because they were discharging people from the service, and other Niseis were all being discharged and they were coming home. Some of 'em were very hurt and mad because of this, they were getting discharged and here they were with a unit, and of course, basic through everything, they've been there couple years. And so they felt really bad about it.

TI: So you had heard about this, you heard about other Niseis who were in the service being discharged because of their ancestry.

YU: Right, right.

TI: And then you get this draft notice.

YU: I got my draft notice, so I figured it's not gonna work, they're not gonna draft me because here they're letting everybody out.

TI: So you're thinking it's probably some kind of mistake almost, that it's more of a timing thing.

YU: Right.

TI: That, "Once they know I'm Japanese, then they..."

YU: I thought it was a mistake that I got a... ordered to report to Fort MacArthur.

TI: And so when you reported and they found out that you were Japanese, Japanese American, was there any reaction on their part?

YU: No, they didn't, they just took me along as any other, anybody else and issued me all the things that all the GIs got.

[Interruption]

TI: Yosh, we're gonna start this next section, and you had just received your draft notice and you reported to, I think Fort MacArthur, to be inducted. But before we talk about this, I want to actually go back and talk about your judo. So at this point, had you received your black belt in judo?

YU: I received my black belt when I was sixteen, and I felt real honored receiving my black belt given out by Dr. Jigoro Kano, the founder of judo.

TI: And where was this?

YU: This was in southern California, in Los Angeles and in a tournament. And I had won, and there were a few other students at the same time, we received our black belts.

TI: And after you received your black belt at sixteen, did you continue with judo? Did you keep progressing to different levels?

YU: No, I kept practicing, but I didn't practice real competitively because there was some, I think I had pulled a muscle in my back or something.

TI: But at this point you had your black belt, you said you won this tournament, so were you being known now as a pretty good judo person?

YU: Yeah, I think the whole family was known as a judo family, because my brother was, Sam, although he was small -- about, he's about five feet five, a hundred twenty-five, thirty pounds, not real heavy -- but he was fast. And in southern California he was considered the, one of the up and coming judokas.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 9>

TI: Okay. So now, going back, as you're entering the military, I'm curious, do they ask, do they ask you questions like judo? Do they know that you were good at judo when you entered the army?

YU: They, I think you put down what you have done or something like that. I think we did put down judo.

TI: And how did the army react to that? Did they view it as something that was interesting?

YU: They didn't think anything by it. They just...

TI: But they knew what it was?

YU: Yeah, they knew.

TI: Okay. So tell me, you're in the army now, what's this like? What happens next?

YU: Well, I'm at Fort MacArthur, and we were, about middle of the night we hear a bunch of antiaircraft guns going off, and everything just, yeah, that something, that a plane's flying over California.

TI: This is in Los Angeles?

YU: This is Los Angeles, Fort MacArthur, San Pedro is Fort MacArthur.

TI: Right.

YU: And next morning it's a big headline, "Jap planes fly over Los Angeles." And then the naval intelligence come out and said, "No, there was no planes." So there was controversial things constantly about the Japanese.. Somewhere along the line they figured all the... also, Santa Barbara had a submarine. That, how much truth there is to it, I don't know. But they said a small submarine landed in Santa Barbara.

TI: But yeah, but going back to the antiaircraft sort of firings, so the controversy, I think some people thought, well, there were really were planes, but then now the government's trying to cover it up to not have a panic?

YU: Yeah, the government said there's no planes, and the FBI said no planes. The naval intelligence said no planes.

TI: So what happened? Why were they firing all these guns?

YU: Well, that's the thing that everybody was mystified, 'cause they said no Japanese, no Japanese planes.

TI: So you think someone may have just gotten sort of panicked a little bit?

YU: Well, I think that it was the time point. Any little thing was, people thought there were saboteurs all over the place.

TI: And you were there. I mean, did you see anything about... what did you think?

YU: No, the only thing is we, they, we had to be sure that the lights were off and that the blinds were pulled. The sergeant would come through and he said, "Close the blinds." And that was about it.

TI: So tell me, so you were there, these guns had just gone off and you were there, what was the atmosphere at Fort MacArthur?

YU: Well, it was scary, because, is this the truth or just some maneuvering of soldiers or planes or something? But nobody really knew what was going on.

TI: And at your level, from what you knew, what did you think about the possibility of a Japanese invasion in Los Angeles?

YU: Well, we were, we weren't too sure that a Japanese... but then, of course, they had, the Japanese had bombed Hawaii, and nobody thought the Japanese could bomb Hawaii. And now they thought maybe the carriers are in the, somewhere close by in the Pacific.

TI: And that if it were, L.A. would be a likely target.

YU: Right.

TI: Okay. So there was fear. I mean, people were concerned.

YU: That's right.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 10>

TI: Now, when you were at Fort MacArthur, were there other Japanese Americans who were also there as kind of new draftees?

YU: Oh yeah. We were, there was quite a few of us. We got to know each other, quite a few. Says, "Hey, where you from?" and introduce each other, and we find that they're not more than twenty-five miles away from us, somewhere in Santa Monica or from Glendale or something.

TI: And so what did you guys talk about? Were you still talking about, "This must be a mistake?" Or as you were in there longer and longer, you started thinking, well, maybe you're gonna be here for a while?

YU: We say, "Uh oh." I said, "We're get, looks like this is gonna last for a while." I said, "I hope not." And then that's about the extent of the thing. And says, "Well, what'd you do?" I said, "I went, I was going to school." "Where were you going?" "I was down in Santa Barbara or some place." Or, "I was at Cal." I says, "Oh yeah?" So we'd get to talking about school.

TI: So the ones that you ran into, they were, the commonality was that you were all going to college.

YU: Right.

TI: Now, I guess during training or even after training, were the Nisei soldiers treated differently than the white soldiers? Was there, like at some point did they send white soldiers to a different place than Nisei soldiers, or anything different like that?

YU: That, I don't know because we were all put together. But nobody said, "You Jap, I'm not gonna eat with you," or anything like that. It was just... they all felt they were in it together.

TI: Well how about when training was done, were the, like, white soldiers sent into action and the Japanese soldiers held back? Or how about that?

YU: Well, now from Fort MacArthur we went to basic training, and that was in Little Rock. In basic training we all worked together, and I think they were, the officers in charge, they didn't think, they didn't, they weren't, to me, looked like they really liked us being there. But whenever we did physical exercise and everything, we were right on the top. We might be small, but like climbing the six foot wall, we were able to hit the wall and bounce right on top and over we went. Whereas the Caucasians, they couldn't do that, and I think one of the reasons were we were in college, or we had just come out of the college area, we always were active and played basketball or played something around the school. And we were not obese, and we sort of raced against each other, the Niseis. We says, "Well, I'm gonna do it faster than you." And so it was between us. And of course, the company commander was just shocked because we were so much faster and we got things done so much faster than any of the Caucasian soldiers.

TI: So some of these courses that you had to go through, you guys were the...

YU: We were fast.

TI: Okay.

YU: And I think in us we had, we didn't want to be shown to, shown up, so I think we fought harder.

TI: But it's interesting too, I could see where for maybe some of the white soldiers, there might be some resentment. And did you ever get hassled by any of the white soldiers?

YU: No, they didn't, nobody hassled us, because... I don't know, we never, they were all from places like Minnesota and they never saw any Japanese before, or they were from Chicago area, they had not been, seen any Japanese, so there was, I think that they couldn't believe that we were in the army.

TI: Yeah, because in some ways they're thinking that they're gonna be pretty soon fighting against someone who looks just like you, right? I mean, that's probably the...

YU: That could be, but sitting there, and we were telling a story to each other, and some of 'em would say, "Oh, I was a mail delivery, I drove the mail delivery truck," or another guy would say, "Gosh, I got to get out of this place. I miss my two ton truck," or something like that. Said, "What was so good about that?" "I like that shift and the [makes revving sound]." [Laughs]

TI: That's interesting.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 11>

TI: So while you're doing this, about this time on the West Coast they're removing the families from places like --

YU: We were, while we were doing basic training in Arkansas, yes, they were starting to move. And I would get letters saying that they had to move.

TI: And so what happened to your family? Where did they go?

YU: They went to Poston, Arizona.

TI: And who would that be, that would be your parents and who else?

YU: My father, my brother, and my two other brothers.

TI: So it'd be Sam, Henry, and George.

YU: George, yes.

TI: Now, Sam is older than you. Why do you think he wasn't drafted?

YU: I think because he was on the farm and they needed people to work, to run the farm.

TI: Interesting. And then going back to your idea that the ones they drafted were going to college, so they weren't maybe doing something else.

YU: Maybe that was the reason why.

TI: Okay, so they all go to Poston, and then what happened after staying at Poston, during segregation? So they answered what some people call the "loyalty questionnaire" or that leave clearance form, so what happened to the family?

YU: Well, then they had nothing else to do around there, I guess, so I... the people would, people would be very unhappy when they didn't get this, they don't, I don't know. So they would ask my brother to help, because he was a Kibei, so he could speak English as well as Japanese, so they, all the Isseis would ask him, ask my brother if he would talk to them about getting better living conditions or, I don't know what. So he would represent them. He would go --

TI: Interesting, so he became a spokesperson for the, for many of the Isseis.

YU: Spokesman, yeah.

TI: Okay. And so did that put him in a difficult position?

YU: That made him a person that's a leader and he would speak out, so they said, "He's dangerous."

TI: And this is while he's at Poston?

YU: Right, Poston.

TI: Okay. And then, so what happened to him?

YU: Well, they moved him to Santa Fe.

TI: Okay, from Poston to Santa Fe. Now, I'm wondering --

YU: Santa Fe, New Mexico.

TI: Yeah. I mean, technically Santa Fe, New Mexico, that was a Department of Justice internment camp.

YU: Right.

TI: And it was supposed to be for "enemy aliens" or people who were non-U.S. citizens. Your brother Sam was a U.S. citizen.

YU: Right.

TI: Did, do you know if he, did he renounce his citizenship?

YU: No, no.

TI: So they just moved him because they just thought he --

YU: They just moved him, right.

TI: They could do that. So they weren't supposed to do that.

YU: Yeah.

TI: How about your other brothers?

YU: Well, then my brothers kept, they had a judo organization there and they used to practice judo. And eventually they felt that they were also dangerous, and they moved them to Santa Fe too.

TI: The same thing. Interesting.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 12>

TI: How about your father and mother?

YU: Well, my mother was still there. My father, they moved him to Bismarck, North Dakota.

TI: Okay. And while this is going on, what are you thinking? Because not only --

YU: I'm just thinking, "This is just crazy, you know? They're not dangerous criminals or alien or anything like that. They just speak their mind." And, like my brother had, Sam, although he went just to high school education, but he used to be a leader for a lot of the Kibeis in Los Angeles area. So like Kumamoto Kenjinkai, he would be the leader speaking up for things. And he had no fear.

TI: Yeah, so if you were to ask people about the Uchida brothers, Sam, Yosh, Henry, George, you're all good in judo, were you viewed as kind of like tough kids?

YU: Not really. We were...

TI: Or people to be careful around, maybe?

YU: No, because we were not like some of the hoods that you'd find roaming the community. We didn't do anything like that, so we were...

TI: But at least from the government perspective, they were, seemed like they were a little fearful.

YU: Well, you see, it could be, because they were, they had no information on... they thought Niseis that did judo were dangerous. They thought the people that did kendo were dangerous, because with kendo they would, they were taught to cut, a samurai spirit. Judo, there was not that much, you might say, a Japanese spirit or anything like that. They had a bushido spirit in all martial arts.

TI: And so when you think about now, the fact that they sent your brothers to Santa Fe, do you think being labeled as a judo person kind of made that happen more so because of that?

YU: Could be, but it was sort of a, yeah, I think they could, they could be... because he was good in judo.

TI: Again, I'm wondering why they would do that, because again, there weren't really that many, especially from places like Poston, that many that went from Poston to Santa Fe.

YU: No, there was a whole bunch of judo people went.

TI: So yeah, they...

YU: 'Cause, and they were not good judo people. They were people, probably... today they would not make San Jose State Judo Team. [Laughs]

TI: But they hung around good judo people, so... [Laughs] Okay. And what happened to your brothers? They were in Santa Fe, and then did they stay there for the duration of the war?

YU: Then my older brother was sent to Bismarck because Santa Fe had a bunch, from what I understand, they had a bunch of people there that were Isseis, and they were a very outspoken bunch of Isseis, and, like, there was a reverend from San Jose Buddhist Church that was there, he had gone to Stanford and he was really speaking out against, against the government. But he was not dangerous 'cause he didn't know judo. He was a small man. But he told me that my brother was a spokesman for all the old people, and because he knew judo they sort of feared him.

TI: So he was kind of, it sounded like your brother was kind of fearless too. He was able to...

YU: Yeah, spoke, spoke in behalf of all them.

TI: And so they moved him to Bismarck to kind of separate him from the rest of the people.

YU: Right, right.

TI: But your father was...

YU: My father was in Bismarck, too. He, but he's a Issei and he didn't do anything, but from what I understand, he used to listen to, what do you call, shortwave, shortwave radio.

TI: Now, after the war -- I'm jumping around a little bit -- what, how do you think the Santa Fe, and in the case of your older brother, Bismarck, that experience, how did that affect them?

YU: Well, because of that they decided that, well, my father, from what I understand, came back to Tule Lake -- not came back, came to Tule Lake -- and my mother said, well, they decided to go back to Japan because he was already in his sixties. I don't know how old he was, but he passed away at sixty-eight or something, he was sixty-eight years old, something like that. But he was about sixty-five, and he felt that he just didn't have the strength to start up again.

TI: So he and your mother went back to Japan, then.

YU: My father went.

TI: Your father went back. But not your mother?

YU: No, she did, but she went on the second or third wave.

TI: Okay. And how about Sam? What did Sam...

YU: They, he went home. He went back with my father.

TI: Okay, so the two of them went...

YU: Yeah. Then my --

TI: And this was during the war they went to Japan?

YU: No, the war ended.

TI: The war had ended, okay. Then they...

YU: Then my two younger brothers went with Sam.

TI: Also to Japan.

YU: Japan, yeah.

TI: Okay.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 13>

TI: Now, do you ever think about, if you weren't drafted in the military, what do you think would've happened to you?

YU: I'd probably be, I probably would've been going back with them.

TI: Interesting how your life could've been very different.

YU: Right, right. And I tried to tell my mother that, when I got discharged in December, I flew into Tule Lake -- not Tule Lake, I took a flight out of Joplin, Missouri, and came as fast as I could to stop my mother from going back into, at Tule Lake. And she said, well, she was gonna go back. I said, "Look, the war's over. And everything, things are not going good in Japan, so stay here and we'll start all over again." And she said, "Well, the two younger boys have gone back, so I said I will go back and see that they're taken care of."

TI: Wow. That must've been a pretty difficult time for you, to see your family being affected so much that they're going to Japan, even to a war-torn country, a place that's really difficult to live in. They're going and you're watching this. So what were you thinking at this point?

YU: Well, I thought that was a dumb move, but what else can you say? And they went home, my dad said when he went back, the first time, he had expanded the farm and fixed the home up, and so he thought he had a place to go. Well, things changed, with MacArthur saying that anybody been out of the country for over twenty-five years or something like that, or had not attended the farm in twenty-five years, whoever was in the, on the farm, it belongs to them.

TI: So essentially your father was stripped of his ownership rights.

YU: That's right, so weren't going back there. He didn't have any rights.

TI: So it was very, it must've been a very, very difficult time for your father.

YU: It was. It was very difficult. But they're survivors, and they, he moved on with things.

TI: Now, how about your brothers? Did they eventually, did any of them return to the United States?

YU: Yeah, they did, but before they returned they were involved in a lot of things in Japan. My brother knew that Japan was defeated, so he knew that the construction was very important. So he got into contractor work and he did a lot of contracting in construction.

TI: And this is your, Sam?

YU: Yeah. And he helped many of the Niseis and Kibeis that had come back from Japan, I mean from the United States.

TI: For jobs, you mean?

YU: For jobs, yeah.

TI: And were these contracts more like occupation kind of?

YU: Occupation, right. And since he could speak in both Japanese and English, he could work with 'em. And so my younger brother, George, told me that he did a lot of construction in the area. The occupation forces needed someone that can lead the thing, so like the airport at Sendai that got washed out with the tsunami, my brother said, "Sam built that."

TI: Interesting. Again, it's interesting how lives can change so dramatically, and how your brothers, both older and younger, ended up in Japan right after the war.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 14>

TI: So let's go back to your life now. You're, where we left you, you were in basic training in Little Rock Arkansas.

YU: Right, basic training, Little Rock, Arkansas.

TI: When you finish basic training, what happened next?

YU: Well, they didn't know what to do, so for about a month we were, we'd get up in the morning and have breakfast and clean the yard, pick up cigarette butts.

TI: These are the other Nisei soldiers?

YU: Yeah.

TI: Because the --

YU: The, there was fifteen of us.

TI: Because the white soldiers they sent off...

YU: They were in Australia on the battlefront.

TI: Well, at about this time, after you'd done basic training, the 100th Battalion was sort of, were they operational at that point? At Shelby, were they being trained?

YU: No, the 100th Battalion had just come in, but not then, but right after, about summertime.

TI: Okay. But when they, as you're trying to figure out what to do, there are plans for the 100th. Did they ever come talk to you about joining the 100th?

YU: No, the 100th was exclusive to Hawaii.

TI: Hawaii, okay. Or the 442, then, later on?

YU: The 442 was later on, but 1942 -- '42? '43, I think. No, '42, you're right. '42, about end of summer '42, there was, there was a recruiter that came around to recruit us.

TI: 'Cause at this point you're more experienced and you've been in the army for longer than the other Japanese Americans.

YU: Right, right.

TI: And so I'm guessing that they were thinking of you as cadre type of material.

YU: Right.

TI: So what was your reaction?

YU: Well, we were all, we would all sit in a place like this, barracks, we'd say, "Hey, we understand we're gonna get our stripes." "Yeah, they said you get as much as tech or staff, staff sergeant stripes." And guys would say, "Ah, what the hell. You can't trust these guys." There's all kinds of rumors would go by. They'd say, "Look what they did to us, our parents and everything. How can you trust 'em?" And so when the time came to volunteer, I mean to go to Shelby, Mississippi, hardly anybody volunteered to go.

TI: Now, why didn't they just order you guys? I would think, you're in the army --

YU: Well, they could've ordered us, but they wanted a volunteer cadre that was going to be really gung ho about it, because they weren't sure that it was gonna be successful. They didn't, and they didn't want to order just the, this group that they just took everything away from. They weren't sure what kind of, what kind of soldiers we would be. We probably, we probably would've been a good soldier because once we were in it we had to survive what we probably...

TI: Now, in hindsight, so the 442 became the most highly decorated unit for its size and length of service.

YU: Right.

TI: From your perspective, any regrets that you didn't go and serve in the 442?

YU: No, no, because friends I had all died.

TI: During the war, you mean? While fighting in Europe.

YU: Fighting in Europe. And it was sad, but those are the things that happened, and they were people that we knew, that said, "Okay, I'm gonna volunteer and go."

TI: So these were the guys who were in that barracks talking. Some of them went and some of them didn't make it.

YU: Right. But some of 'em didn't, knew we were not the best soldiers, you might say, so they didn't associate with us.

TI: Okay. So you were kind of with a group of the best, the best of the group, then, the ones who would always win the races kind of.

YU: Yeah, we were... but some of 'em, they were, they just didn't have that feeling that we did. They felt, "Oh, I'm gonna go." They were brought up in a, not too much of a Japanese community.

TI: Now, were you guys ever recruited for the MIS? Did they ever --

YU: Oh yeah.

TI: And what were your thoughts about the MIS?

YU: We thought, this is also frontline, and people, we would talk about it and says, "Oh, I don't know." There would be Kibei guys in there, he says, "That's dangerous. That's worse than the 442nd, the Shelby group." So they said, "If they want you, they'll come after you." But we were not. I guess they had enough MIS.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 15>

TI: And so what did you end up doing, then? So you didn't join the 442, didn't join the MIS, so where did --

YU: So they had us, there was a lot of work to be done, cleaning in barracks, like... we, then we got shipped to Fort Meade, South Dakota. And in Fort Meade, Fort Meade, South Dakota, that's close to where Custer made his last stand, and it was a small fort, but it was just overwhelmed with 88th Airborne group, and it was just jam packed with soldiers going overseas. And our job, taking care of the service center or the theater, and my job was to... order comes in the commissary, and my job was to take it every day.

TI: Okay. Now, during your military career, I mean, while you're doing these kind of jobs, were you ever given a bad time for being of Japanese ancestry?

YU: No. They didn't give us anything that was very important. Like for me, they'd have me clean the theater, and of course, it's a full time job. It's an eight hour job. You start from the top and you sweep the, all the popcorn kernels and popcorn boxes down and clean it up, make sure that the place is clean. So I did that for a couple of days, then I said, this is the stupidest job I ever saw, so I said, "I got to figure out a better thing than this, better way than this." So I got a hold of, I looked down and look at, it was cement, and so I got hold of the fire hose, and they had a big fire hose and it was strong, and I turned it on and my god, the water just shot right out with a lot of power. And I looked at, I shot it down to, down, not the stair but the slope to the theater, and all the popcorn bottles, I mean, not bottles but package, just went sailing down. Said, "Hey, this is smart." So I turned it on and I washed all the popcorn boxes down and cleaned it up, and I found that, and then I turned on the air, heater, dried it out, and in an hour or so I had the whole place clean and spic and span. The sergeant comes by and he says, "Wow." He says, "I never saw anything like this. It's so clean. You did a great job." Course, I didn't tell him I washed it down with the water. [Laughs] So that was my life there, and it was very easy. The sergeant thought I did a great job, so every week he would give me a five dollar bonus or something like that and then a free ticket to the theater.

TI: But you were just using your head. You were just kind of thinking of something smarter. [Laughs]

YU: I thought it was dumb. I said, "What the hell, I can't be this dumb."

TI: So how long were you in South Dakota?

YU: Let's see, I was there about a year.

TI: And then where'd you go?

YU: I went to Fort Warren, Wyoming, in Cheyenne.

TI: Now, in Wyoming, did you ever visit, or did you know about Heart Mountain?

YU: Yeah, I knew about Heart Mountain, but I never visited it because I, it worried me that if I get inside they might start questioning me about something, I don't know. And those things, those times, you couldn't trust all these officers and things 'cause some of the officers were nice, but some of 'em were bad. Like I was in, from Joplin to Salina, and there an officer was assigned to our company, and he had been on a ship going to, I don't know where, but it got torpedoed and he fell or something and hurt his knee real badly, so he sort of had a hatred for Japanese. And when he came and seen all the Japanese there, he said, "What is this? Am I in charge of a Jap battalion or something like that?" And he screamed at the, all the Japanese guys that were in the room there. So we were, so those were times, you couldn't, we couldn't really trust -- unless we're somewhere where we're sure everybody can see you.

TI: Okay. Before we move you back to San Jose, any other memories or stories about the service? Because you were there for about four years?

YU: One time in Camp Crawley, Missouri, there was a guy that just came along and, we were the kitchen police group, so we, afterwards, we'd go to work in the morning and then night, and then we'd get one day off and one day on. So the days we worked, we'd get through about one o'clock, everything's clean, you just lay in the bunk, rest for a while. Had a great big guy coming from Oklahoma, and he just came along and he, we would all be in the bunk and he'd just flip 'em over. I said, "What the hell you doing that for?" He says, "I don't like Japs. It's fun flippin' you guys over." So this went on all that day, and the next day he's back again, flipping us.

TI: And is he all by himself, or is he with --

YU: He's by himself. And he says, so finally I said, "Hey, quit that." He said, "This is fun." And of course, none of the Nikkeis would challenge that, so I got out and I said, "I'll take you on. Try that again and I'll take you." And he said, "You're too small. I used to be a pro wrestler." I said, "I don't give a goddamn. Come on." So he said, "Well, I'm gonna crush you," he said, "because I used to be a pro wrestler and I used to crush people." So he got a hold of me and I just sidestepped him and I knew exactly what he was gonna do, use a lot of strength on me and try to knock me over. And I know that, so I just picked him up and I just slammed him on the floor, and the guy was shocked, and of course it knocked his wind out and he's laying on his back. The whole barracks were Niseis, so I was a hero of the barracks. [Laughs]

TI: So you used your judo on this...

YU: Yeah.

TI: You just used his energy, his force and used it against him.

YU: He's coming at me so I just threw him. So the Niseis thought it was great. [Laughs]

TI: That's a good story. And so I'm guessing after that point he didn't do this anymore.

YU: No, no, no.

TI: Well, did you ever see him again? Did he, like, respect you more, and did you ever talk to him?

YU: He didn't, I saw him once.

TI: Okay. [Laughs]

YU: After that, he never came up there.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 16>

TI: So let's get you back to San Jose. So when you're done with the military, you decide to return to San Jose to go back to school?

YU: Right.

TI: And at this point, were, was the rest of your family in Japan?

YU: They had all gone back, yes.

TI: So you were, from a family standpoint, the only one left.

YU: Right.

TI: And what were you thinking at that point? I mean, so go to school, and what were your thoughts in terms of what you would do?

YU: Well, I was thinking of going to school, finishing up, but I had to, I changed my major because while in the service, when I went to Fort Warren, Wyoming, I had an opportunity going to personnel. The guy says, "What have you been doing?" He said, "You have all the qualifications, chemical, a lot of chemistry and engineering, calculus and everything." He said, "Why don't you, what have you been doing?" I said, "Well, I've been cleaning theaters and doing dishes." And he says, "Did you go through personnel?" "Oh yes." He says, "Well, you have enough on chemistry and laboratory experience that maybe you could be of help in our hospital." I said, "Doing what?" Said, "Working in the laboratory." I said, "That sounds good." He said, "Would you like to do that?" So I said, "Sure." So I went to the laboratory and said, "I'm reporting for duty." And the captain says, "Oh sure." He says, "Glad to have you," and says, well, gave it to the sergeant. The sergeant says, "We have, we want you to wash these dishes and this, this, this." It was all washing job. I said, "Okay."

So I got doing that, and I had Japanese friends, Niseis I got to know, and they said, "Yosh, you got to do this." First they were very cool about it, but as time went they got very friendly and said, "You got to do it this way. Do this, do this." And they showed me many things I had to learn, laboratory work. And it looked fun, so, "How'd you guys get this?" They said, "We went to laboratory school." I said, "So you think going to laboratory school, I can do that, be able to do?" And they said, "No, you don't have to go to laboratory. We'll teach you." I said, "Oh yeah?" "Yeah." Then, fortunately, there were two pathologists, young lieutenants, just got, just got out of school, I think, and the two of 'em -- and one of 'em was from Duke University and the other one was Stanford University -- and they said, I wanted to go to school, they said, "You don't need to go to school. We'll teach you." Says, "After you get your work done at about twelve or one o'clock," says, "report to us and we'll help you." So I would work and then finish up and go to the two lieutenants' office, and they say, "Well, okay, I guess I'll have Dr. Margolis teach today." And they would give me basic, "And so we'll stay with immunity, so we'll go basic." So they, basic laboratory, and I'd say, they'll say, "Did you understand?" I said, "No, I didn't understand." He said, "Well, when you inject something foreign into your body, it forms an antibody, and these antibodies fight whatever foreign particle come in." So they would draw the things for me so that I could -- "Oh, I see." And this is how I learned from two real nice people who, this fellow at Stanford knew about the Japanese being evacuated. Fellow from Duke, he didn't know anything about the Japanese. He knew I was a Japanese, but that was it. And the Nikkei soldiers there who had -- they were good med techs, they had graduated from Davis and all that, they were very good -- and they said, "Okay, Yosh, we'll help you along too." So I got all kinds of help, and so I knew more laboratory and about the human body than most average guys that went to the hospital in, army hospital training.

TI: And so when you returned to San Jose State and took biological sciences, I mean, it sounds like you already were probably already qualified to get your degree. You probably had all that information.

YU: Well, I understood it. I'd take, like hematology, and I knew all about it, I mean, I studied in class, but everything the professor talked about, I had already heard. So it made it easier.

TI: Yeah, so probably, when you returned to college, it was pretty easy for you.

YU: It wasn't easy, because we had, I had a wife and a little girl, so I had to support them too.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 17>

TI: So let's, yeah, actually that was in my notes, I wanted to ask you. So when did you get married?

YU: 1943.

TI: Okay, so this was right when you, about when you started.

YU: 1946 is when I got back to school.

TI: So this is one year in the service, 1943. So who did you marry, and how did you meet?

YU: I married a girl named Mae, M-A-E, Hiraki, and she is from Morgan Hill, just twenty miles south of San Jose. She was also going to school, San Jose State, at the time I met her. But she quit school because they told her that she can't go into teaching because if she can't get student teaching they won't, she will never get certified, or teaching credentials.

TI: Because she was Japanese.

YU: She's Japanese. So she decided to quit. And that's about the same, she quit a year before I came there.

TI: Okay. But when you got married in 1943, did she stay, where did she live after you got married?

YU: She left camp and came with me.

TI: Okay, so like in...

YU: Fort Meade, South Dakota.

TI: South Dakota, and then later on Wyoming and all that. Okay. And then during that time you had a baby girl.

YU: Yeah, baby girl.

TI: Okay. And so you're returning to San Jose not only as a student but also as a father and a husband.

YU: Yeah. So then the fun starts, because I get here and I'm discharged, and I have my Ruptured, it was called Ruptured Duck, showing that you got honorable discharge. I didn't have any more clothes than the clothes that I had, khakis that I had. Went and I applied for jobs, and they -- not jobs but applied to get an apartment -- and I, and this was in the same area that I used to live in before I went into the service. He said, "Sorry, but all the rooms are rented." So next day, a couple days, the whole week goes by, and the "For rent" is still there. And as time went on we see that these things were happening frequently.

TI: This is in San Jose?

YU: San Jose, yeah. Then my, a man named Sam Della Magiore that was a wrestling coach, well, I called him first thing I arrived, so then he says, "How are you doing?" I said, "Well, I can't find a place to stay." And he says, he was really mad, but he said, "You know," he said, "I bought a place out here. It's about two miles away from the school, near an orchard." He says, "There's a shack on there. Why don't you come and stay there? You don't have to pay any rent or anything." Okay, so I stayed with him there for about two, two and a half years.

TI: And during that time they just weren't renting to Japanese?

YU: Well, they started to, I think, but I wasn't interested 'cause I was now living with Sam Della Magiore.

TI: Okay. When you finished San Jose State, what did you do next?

YU: Well, I started looking for a job and then I ran into trouble again, because I went to San Jose Hospital and applied for a job, and they looked at me and, I mean the pathologist looked at me, and he says, "We can't hire you." I said, "Why not?" He says, "I've worked with hundreds of veterans returning from the war and everything." Said, "I had no problem." He said, "Yeah, but that was during the war. Now you're in civilian life, and I don't think they would want a Japanese touching them." So I said, so I was furious. So I came back and I told Sam Della Magiore about it, and he was furious. But he had friends, he had a resident at O'Connor Hospital and his name was Dr. Joseph Calcagno, and he talked with him and Dr. Calcagno said, "Wait a minute. I'll talk with the Sisters of Charity, the administrator." And the administrator talked with a pathologist, and they says, "Oh sure." So they said, "Well, maybe he could work here and get some experience, and then cover us for night calls." And I said okay, so at that time I was the lowest paid, under a hundred dollars a month, but I had a job. So from there, I worked and then at night I, and when school started again I worked at night covering the calls, emergency calls. And then in the daytime I went to school, but the same time I also got a job teaching self defense. This became the Judo Club.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 18>

TI: So tell me about that self defense course. Who were the students of that?

YU: They were all police students, and they had been in... well, I think they were majoring in police and they were, minimum was five feet nine, hundred and sixty-five pounds, and they were a huge bunch of guys.

[Interruption]

TI: -- just talked about a part time job teaching self defense, and you mentioned how your students were, it sounded like men who were majoring in police work, but the, one of the qualifications was that they had to be five foot nine and a hundred and sixty-five pounds, so these were fairly large men.

YU: They were all, that was the minimum.

TI: Yeah, so I'm curious, how did you get that job?

YU: You know, that was really amazing. I got the job because I think there was a fellow named Mel Bruno in, Mel Bruno in 1940 at San Jose State -- he was a good wrestler, well-known wrestler -- and he had gone to Japan, and I guess an American junior team had gone to Japan and he was on that team. And in Japan, I guess they had an opportunity to do some wrestling with the Japanese, and of course, American wrestlers are much better, so they beat all of them. And then they said something about, "Well, why don't, have you had some judo experience?" And I guess he said yes, he did, and so they had him do some judo. Of course, the Japanese judo people had never met anyone that had the wrestling experience, so I think he pinned a lot of them, and so they gave him automatically a nidan, or second degree black belt, from the Kodokan. And so he had started a judo program at San Jose in 1937, and here I came in 1940, then right after I came there, he left almost immediately after I got, I came there. And he, the reason he left at that time was the wartime preparations was on; they're gonna get everybody, the draft was on. People were starting to get drafted. But the soldiers were not in condition because America had never had a draft or anything like that, and so this was, they were all off the farm or they had not been doing much exercise, and so they were recruiting a lot of, coaches, football, basketball, track and field, and anybody that had physical education experience into the service.

Well, Mel Bruno had both the wrestling and judo experience, so he was immediately put in there, and he was, I think he was in one of the, one program, I think Gene Tunney program. So he said he's getting an appointment to that. He was going, he's going to leave. He left real suddenly, said, "Well, Yosh, I'm recommending that you be assigned to it." So right after he left, I taught the students self defense, but my self defense, I was really crummy. I really didn't know enough about self defense, except what Mel taught me. But I didn't think they were too good either. So I started to teach these students. "You have to move," I said. "You can't, you can't just sit there and expect somebody to just stick a, stick a pistol in you and you're gonna stand there, take it away." I said, "That's impossible. You have to move. So let's put more emphasis on judo." And so we got judo going. And then, of course, this was end of 1940 and December, almost a year later, judo ended.

TI: Okay, so you first started doing this part time judo before the war.

YU: Right.

TI: And then, now, after the war --

YU: After the war.

TI: -- you were able to start up again.

YU: Yeah, because for one, this program was under a man named Tiny Hartranft, and Tiny Hartranft was a physical education leader, chairman, and also he was the... what would you call it? The administrator of collegiate athletics. So this man had two titles and judo was under his program, so he... and then there was a man named Schmidt, this man Schmidt also, he had, his name was Willard Schmidt, and Willard Schmidt was the director of, for internal security at Tule Lake.

TI: How interesting.

YU: So my mother told me that he had come to visit her because we had, I guess she had kids that were in Manzanar, Tule Lake, and all over the place, so how bad the place was. And she saw, and he saw she had these pictures up there of myself and San Jose State judo team, and he recognized his students that were in the picture. And he says, "Where did this come from?" She says, "My son taught judo at San Jose State." So then when, when I went there, they were very, he, Tiny Hartranft remembered me and Willard Schmidt had seen me, seen my picture at my mother's quarters in Tule Lake. So it was, I was the first Asian that was hired at the San Jose State.

TI: Interesting. And was this to coach the judo team at that point?

YU: Yes.

TI: And this was what year again? Nineteen what?

YU: This was in 1940, I started in 1940 --

TI: '40.

YU: -- and then I left in 1941, the war came. And then I had gone back. Willard Schmidt appeared in the second time. The first time I just, I was hired just by Tiny Hartranft.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 19>

TI: Okay. So 1947, you take over the coaching of the --

YU: '46.

TI: '46, okay. '46. Which is sixty-five, sixty-six years ago?

YU: Yeah.

TI: And you're still involved with the program.

YU: Yeah.

TI: And you've been involved all these years. You know, I just read an amazing statistic, that the San Jose State University's judo team has won the national championship, what, forty-five times?

YU: Fifty-one.

TI: Fifty-one times?

YU: No, wait, you're right. [Laughs]

TI: Forty-five, forty-five times. So in those sixty-five years, you've been the national champion for forty-five of those years.

YU: Uh-huh.

TI: How is that possible? I've never heard of any one school dominating in a sport at the national level like this.

YU: Well, sometimes you recruit, but most of the times I knew the coaches and they would say, "I have, Yosh, I have a good student here that would like to go to school. Can you take him?" I say, "Sure. Send him to San Jose State." And I said, "First, you have to have education in mind, not in judo. I'm not interested in the judo, but you got to be a good student, because when you graduate, I want him to have a degree so that he can get out there." And they say, "Yeah, he's a good student." I say, "Okay. Send him up."

TI: So these are high school coaches who are sending you...

YU: High school, right, right.

TI: But even, every other sport that I know of, that's kind of what coaches, a lot of coaches say. "Come, but first I'm gonna make sure they go to school, it's gonna be education, and then, and then we'll have him on the team." But to win forty-five national champions, championships, that's, that's pretty amazing. I'm trying to think, what's the secret? I mean, what do you do that's different than all the other coaches?

YU: I think we do something different. Everybody thinks that judo, you just throw, and we have, American judo, American judo is that way. Everybody just throws, and if you, if you teach them how to throw, that's fine. If you can't throw 'em, give 'em more strength, give 'em some weightlifting and then, with the power, they throw. Well, we don't use that kind of idea, so ours have been, first, we work them... right now they all come here, San Jose State, but when I had to build them up, I used to have them work on the mat. So you would be coming from Washington maybe, but you do not have any experience and you're sort of scared of taking judo. You hear people getting thrown and getting hurt, so you're scared of getting hurt. So I teach them all mat techniques, so you're on the mat all the time, you don't stand up. You just rub your, rub your back against the mat and move around, and nothing. So that's what I do, and teach them mat holds. And when people learn mat holds, a lot of mat holds, and escape from that, they learn a lot. So you don't have to be lot of, you don't have to have a lot of strength. You don't know a thing about judo, but by doing this you have a lot of fun, you come out and you rub your face against your opponent who's perspiring and you're perspiring, and you, there's sort of a comradeship starts to form. And from that, they said, "Hey, we had a good time. Next, let's take the next semester." Says, "You think you'll show us any standing techniques?" I say, so next semester we teach 'em standing techniques, and by that time they have now got a lot of confidence in the mat. They know that they don't, they won't get hurt, and you give 'em confidence to work. From there, I mix standing and mat techniques, so then we get, go into mat, allow them to do a lot more mat techniques as we go along, I mean standing techniques, as we go along. And they now have confidence that when they hit the mat they don't have to worry about it.

TI: But I'm thinking that many of your students over the years have seen this and participated, and when they go on to coach, don't they teach the same technique then?

YU: They do.

TI: Why can't they beat you, then? [Laughs]

YU: [Laughs] They, we get a lot students now that were former San Jose State...

TI: So they send you all the good, good...

YU: They said, "He's good. I want to send him to you." I say, "Fine."

TI: But did any of your students coach at the college level so they became like a competing --

YU: No, they don't teach at the college level. Most of 'em teach in club, dojo level.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 20>

TI: But more than your coaching at San Jose State, you, one, helped establish judo as a national sport in the United States. So talk about that. How do you take something like judo, that people viewed it as this Japanese thing, to make it a national sport in the United States?

YU: Yeah, that was something that I had thought about when I was still twenty-six years old, and I had, I had students... well, judo, we have, let's go back, judo did not have that good reputation that it's a great sport or anything like that. It's, judo was in martial arts, and students learned judo in the service, and they would come back from the service and they'd say, "I learned judo. Let me show you." And they would maybe pick up the sisters or the girlfriend or boyfriends or whatever, and they would throw 'em. Now, they'll throw 'em on the floor or something like that, or they'd miscalculate or take a step the wrong way and they'd fall, they'd lose their balance and they drop on top of them or something like that, and they always had an injury. And of course, with all these injuries, judo became, was not a popular sport. It was a dangerous sport, and you have to get the confidence of people. And also, judo, these were taught by former veterans, ex veterans, and it was not a, not taught well.

So when I start teaching, the students would, I had two or three students come up and says, "I want to drop the judo class." I said, "Why?" He says, "Well, I just want to drop it." "Well, you must have a reason." And he said, "Well, my mother said I wouldn't learn anything from a Jap, so I'm dropping it." I said, "Well, do you like judo?" Said, "Oh yeah, I love it." Said, "Well why don't you stick it, stay in here, and then at the end of the semester, if you feel the same way, you go ahead and drop it." I said, "You're, we're close to the half, half the semester's over." And they say okay. So as they go along, they get to know judo, they find that I'm, I'm just as normal as they are, and it was a real public relations tool, became good public relations too. But also, I also feared that if we kept judo going the way it was there would be a lot of, a lot of injuries, and that was because the students that I had were all big. They were veterans of the World War II, and they had been in the Pacific Theater and places like that, where they had fought the Japanese. And they, and I would say, "Okay, how do you do this technique here?" And I would show 'em this, like this, and so when they do it they just with the strength and the power they had. They would throw people very hard, and I knew that judo was a martial art that did not have any weight, not weight but size. And like, I was the smallest guy in the class, all the rest of 'em were big guys, and I knew that if they really came at me, hooked me, they could injure me. So I started to think, "This is a dangerous sport. We should, I should put, change it some way."

And this is when I went to see a man named Henry Stone at University of California, and Henry Stone was the chairman of the physical education and he was on the NCAA wrestling board. So he had been chair of the University of California department and a member of the board; he had a lot of power in the field of sport, so I talked with him and I told him about this. He says, he says -- and at the same time, our students would go to the Civic Auditorium right down here and say, and they would say, "Hey, Yosh, I don't see why the hell we have to learn judo for, why, as a self defense." I said, "Why?" He says, "I saw this boxer just knock the hell out of a judoguy." "Oh yeah?" "And then also a wrestler beat the crap out of a judo guy." I said, "Well, that was a show, and I don't think that's correct." He said, "Well, it's happening, and I don't think I should take, do anything like this." So I said, "Okay, let's just keep it up, we'll see what we can do." I told Henry Stone about this, people getting, knocking out judo guys and this and that. He said, "Yeah, it's an exhibition." He said, I said, "How can you stop this?" He said, "You can't stop it." He said, "Because it's not a sport." I said, "What? I thought it was a sport. We all practice this as a sport." He says, "No, no, no." He said, "It's a martial arts, but not a sport." I said, "How do you change this?" He said, Henry Stone said, "Okay, you go see this guy Al Sandel." He was a commissioner for the boxing and wrestling in the state of California. "And he can tell you." So I said, "Mr. Sandel, we would like to make judo into a sport." And he says, he looks at, "Well, tell me a little bit about it." So when I got through, he says, "You mean to tell me a big man can work with a small man and the big man beats him?" Says, "That's okay? And small man throws him? That's okay, that's the point?" I said, "Yeah, that's right." He said, "No way." He said, "No way can a small guy beat a big guy who has the weight and the strength and the technique of a small guy." He said, "That's true." And I talked to Henry Stone. He says, "You know, what I learned, in judo if a big guy really learns the technique right and the small guy learns the technique right, the small, the big guy will win every time." And Henry Stone says, "Yeah, that's right." Says, "The best example is Japan." He says, "No small guy has ever won in all Japan championship. They were all big guys." So that convinced him right away, "Yeah, that's right." So says, "What shall we do?" He said, "Okay, we'll have to take the weight. You have a lot of big guys." He says, "I have judo, but my students are Japanese Americans, and they are not big." Said, "They're all small." He said, "Why don't we put 'em together, get a weight, break it down into weight and make four weight divisions?" And we made four weight divisions, and that was a start. But we thought this would go over easy with the Japanese, but it didn't go over that way. They said, they felt that we're taking the whole judo and messing it up with the weights. I said, "Well, it's the safest way to do it."

TI: Because the Japanese believe that it was all technique, that a small person with good technique could still beat a bigger person?

YU: Right, right, right. So we had a lot of unhappy people, and of course, they weren't happy with me because I'm supposed to, I'm the youngest of all these older judo people. And they say, "What the hell? That's not gonna work." So I said, "Well look, we'll take from a hundred and thirty to a hundred and fifty, there's a twenty pounds difference, hundred and fifty to a hundred eighty there's thirty pound difference, and then the heavyweight, and then we compromised that the winner, that there'd be a grand championship with four weight division winners."

TI: And the four division winners would fight each other?

YU: Fight, yeah, the hundred fifty would meet the hundred and thirty pounder, and hundred and eighty would meet the heavyweight, and the winners of these two divisions would be in the final for grand championship. So that sort of cooled everybody down. Okay, that seems like... So we set, at San Jose State we did all the preliminary work and all the data gathering that we, that the Amateur Athletic Union wanted, and we got it all put together. And Henry Stone presented it to the Amateur Athletic Union, and it was accepted as a sport. So from there on, we were... but the, we had Japanese people from Kodokan come, and they thought that was absolutely stupid way of doing, doing it. So they said, "Well, you, Uchida-san, you don't know anything about judo and you're destroying judo." I said, "No, no, I'm not." "But you're putting something in here and it's not our Japanese culture." I said, "But your culture is not going to be destroyed by it. It's going to get popular and it will be good for the Japanese. And the public relations purpose too, so people get to know, they associate with Japanese, they'll get to know more about them."

TI: And this was all being done in the, what, early '50s, like 1953?

YU: Yeah, '50, from '50s on.

TI: Okay.

YU: Then the next thing was strengthening the U.S. and the Amateur Athletic Union accepted judo as a sport, so we had to rewrite rules and many things. And then getting into the, then it came out, "Okay, let's get into the Olympics."

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 21>

TI: Well, that's what I was gonna ask, because 1964 Olympics are in Tokyo where they introduced judo as one of the competitions.

YU: Right, yeah. But then we said, "Let's get into judo as an Olympic sport." I said, "Gee, I don't know how to get it in." And Henry Stone, at that time he knew the International Olympic Committee chair, Avery Brundage, and Avery Brundage, Henry Stone talked to him and Avery Brundage said, "It's not gonna be easy," but he says, "Let me, just leave it to me and I'll work it for you." So, and this is the part that everybody thinks Japan had a hand in it. Japan had nothing to do with it. United States did all the work. Avery Brundage was a fellow from New York, and somebody said that, Henry Stone said he had a home in Santa Barbara and he had lots of Japanese paintings and things. He had a feeling for Japanese culture. So Mr. Brundage said, "Leave it to me. I will soon see what I can do." So he talked with the European, Europe had been in war for many years and they were tired and they didn't have time to devote to such thing as sports and things. They said, "Okay, whatever you do, Mr. Brundage, we'll accept." So then he talked with South American leaders, and they were on revolution or something all the time, so they said, "Go ahead, do what you want." And then the big problem was Asia and Australia, because Australia, New Zealand had fought the Japanese and they were, there was no love in there. The, all the countries in Asia, Japan had invaded every one of 'em, so there was no love in there. And they were gonna vote no, so Avery Brundage, he was a real sports politician. He talked with them and he was able to convince 'em how important it is to get judo into the Olympics at this time and not to oppose it, because later on they would also have a chance to get the Olympics and they would, they'd certainly need Japan's support. I guess, I'm sure that's the way he explained it. And they went along with it, and so that's how judo got into sports, as an Olympic sport.

TI: But he was doing all this really without the support of Japan. I mean, Japan wasn't pushing him to do this. It was more from --

YU: Yeah, Japan did, wasn't, Japan, they would, they thought that it would be nice if they got judo into it, but...

TI: But it wasn't like they were...

YU: No, no, because if Japan had pushed it, it would never have gone.

TI: Interesting. Now, so I'm curious, in the Olympics, did they use this weight class division?

YU: No, they, they used something similar to that, but not quite. But they used sixty kilos and I think it was fifty or sixty, sixty kilos and sixty-six kilos, and eighty, some... no, yeah, seventy-something kilos. But it was close, it was close to it, so it was okay.

TI: But by this time, this was over ten years after you, when they were kind of giving you a bad time about doing this, and they adopted it.

YU: Yeah, but I said, so I said okay, but as time went on and it started to grow and grow, I went to the world championship one time, and man, they were really giving me a bad time. He was sitting next to me, he says, "Look at this." [Laughs] So I think when I go to Japan they, okay, I think I sort of feel that, a little bit of arrogance. "Look what we did for you." Because sometimes they say... [Laughs]

TI: Well, that was kind of the question I was gonna ask, because, are they appreciative of what you've done in terms of the sport of judo?

YU: Yeah, I think many people are. United States, I know it has grown real big, not real big, but it's grown very well and we have many people competing. And also, one of the things it brought on was a social, you might say socialization of people from East to the West and they get to know each other, and it's a lot more fun because if there was, in the system that they had, they would never had a national championship or anything like that because, and the kids would not have associated from Miami to Seattle or anything like that.

TI: Yeah, no, in Seattle judo's pretty big.

YU: Very good, yeah.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 22>

TI: Okay. I'm gonna switch gears. I'm gonna, before we got into judo, I left you, this is right after the war, where you working, I think at the Sisters of Charity?

YU: Yes.

TI: So this was a job you got.

YU: Right.

TI: And I just want to pick up your, 'cause you have this other amazing career in medical laboratories, and so I wanted to kind of continue that story. So from those early jobs in these laboratories, let's talk about your career. So how, how did you, how did that career begin? I mean, how did you decide to get into your own business?

YU: Well, I found that, let's see, I had this job with the college and that, part time, that gave me, I taught two classes every day, two classes. And I had a varsity class on Friday, so I mingled, put these all in so they would, the varsity would work with the intermediate and beginning, so they started to learn a little bit about helping people and helping out, and I said, "This is what you got to do." And it worked out real well. Everybody... and this encouraged the beginners and intermediates to go into the varsity because they were having fun. In the meantime, I had this laboratory work, and at the laboratory I told 'em, "I need a, I need to take from about eleven o'clock to one o'clock, two hours off for lunch." Well, "But I will come in earlier, one hour earlier, and I'll stay an hour later." And they said, well, they really liked that because that's the period when they didn't want to come in early, they didn't want to stay after, so I said, "I'll do this if you give me..."

So doing that, I start to get judo going, and I got, I was getting paid much better now in the laboratory, and I got many offers. And first I went to a place called Doctors Hospital, and they were, they paid me much more, so I quit O'Connor's, but they said, "Well, we would still like you to cover the emergencies for us." But I had to cover emergencies on this Doctors Hospital also, so I said, "Okay, sure." so I had two emergencies to cover, but it was okay. And during the daytime I went and did judo. So as time went on, I went from Doctors Hospital and I quit O'Connor's and Doctors and I went to San Jose Hospital, as supervisor there. And now it was this, the laboratory was close by and judo was close by too, so it made it a lot easier.

And then California has a law in the laboratory field where -- I had, I had all my license and everything -- if after five years in the field, if you can pass, pass a test called the Clinical Bio-analyst Exam, you can own and direct your own laboratory without having anybody supervising. So I decide, okay, I'll take this exam, and I got a book, textbook, very thick one. And I said, "Okay, this is on hematology." So I would spend about six months studying that one section, hematology, everything about hematology. Then I would go on immunology, and parasitology, all of these things, and I would get help from people that knew all of 'em, knew all of these things. And they would help me, and I learned it very, really well so that I could take the exam and pass it. It took about two years to do nothing but concentrate on that. And by concentrate, this is, I did it in my spare time, like on Sundays or something, I did, nothing to do, or nothing to do, but... whenever I could find time, I had the book, textbook with me all the time, so I'd go from page to page. And it took me two years to do it, then I finally took the exam, and I passed it. Now, there's five people in the state of California took that exam that time, and I was one. And after that, after we got through, we would sit around and had coffee, and I'd say, "Well, what did you think of that slide on number, microscope thirty-five?" And they said, "Oh, that's malaria, such and such." And you're supposed to identify whatever it is. That's malaria, plasmodium vivax or something like that. So I, and all the answers they gave me didn't match with what put on there, so I said, "Oh my god, I flunked it." So after the written and the practical, then we have an oral, and so I got called in for the oral. And I looked around, and I was the only one reporting the oral. Apparently my answers for every one of those things were correct.

So they, and it was a pretty rough oral, because the person sitting across, across the way, were all with PhD, MD, pathologist, everything, from University of California, San Francisco, and just looking at 'em scared me. They would shoot questions at me and I would answer 'em, and then once in a while somebody would blare out, "That's not right. Where'd you learn that?" And I'd say, "Well, I learned in the Kolmer text that had this..." He says, "That's absolutely not true." Well, he was wrong; I was right. [Laughs] And all the rest of 'em knew that, so they, so they were pretty good to me. Then the chair, not the chair, the director of laboratory services in the state of California, he was right there, and whenever things got out of hand he would calm 'em down. He would say, "Mr. Uchida, you do other things besides laboratory field. Would you tell us about that?" So I explained to 'em I taught at San Jose State and judo." Then everything calmed down, then we'd go back again. So I passed the exam, and when I got it, I was the only one that passed it in the whole state of California. It was, it's one of these tough exams that they don't want a layman to get, get that...

TI: Right. And so were you the first one to pass it?

YU: No, there were, others had passed it.

TI: But it was a huge barrier to entry, though.

YU: Oh yeah.

TI: I mean, the whole year, you were the only, that year, you were the only --

YU: Yeah, I'm the, that one year, that year I was the only one.

TI: Which is, I suppose, if you're a businessman, that's a good thing, because you don't have much competition because it's too hard to get.

YU: [Laughs] Yeah, but you don't start right away, but you have a license. So with that license, I, some people knew I had a clinical laboratory, others didn't. I just kept it, and an opportunity came when, in 1957, a lady had a small medical laboratory for sale, and she was selling it because the laboratory was not making any money. And I said, "Well, I'll take it off your hands, but I don't have any money." She says, well she wanted to sell it badly. I didn't know how badly until she started telling me. She said, "I'll sell the laboratory to you." I said okay. "How much do you, how much can you afford?" I said, "I can't afford too much. I don't make too much." Said, "I'll tell you what. I'll sell it for you for seventy-five dollars a month and three thousand dollars until paid in full." And I think the interest was about three or four percent. She made it a small interest. So I said, "Okay, that sounds good." And I looked at the laboratory and everything, and equipment alone was worth more than three thousand dollars, so I said okay. So I got started in the laboratory business, and July 1, 1957, I went to all these doctors that I used to do emergency for at nights at O'Connor Hospital, and it was in the area and I said, "I bought a laboratory and could you help me?" And they said, "Oh sure." And they were very good about these, they sent patients for blood counts, urinalysis, stuff like that.

TI: And before they would send 'em to you, what would they do before that?

YU: They'd send 'em to the hospital.

TI: Okay. And how would you compare with the hospital lab? I mean, what would the difference be?

YU: You come right to the laboratory, we'd take, we'd take some sample right away, and we would send the report that day to the doctor.

TI: So from a doctor's standpoint, it was better.

YU: Better, because service was right there.

TI: Whereas hospitals, they didn't really care.

YU: Where at the hospital, it was the same guy that was doing all that work.

TI: Okay, so good. Okay. And so you start with this one lab.

YU: One lab.

TI: And it sounds like it was pretty successful.

YU: Well, I think we were successful and the reputation, our reputation got out there. And the thing was, at the beginning it was very difficult because I, like on Sundays, I was on call by myself because it's my own laboratory and I didn't have enough money to hire anybody. So it was my call, and if they called me at ten o'clock in the morning I'd go out, get the blood sample, take it to the lab, do the work, give the doctor the report that day. So he was happy. And so the reputation got around that you got good service and good work, and with time other doctors were getting started in a new medical area, and they'll say, "Yosh, I'm moving up to Campbell and there's three or four of us are going to pitch in and build a new medical center." Says, "Would you like to put a laboratory in?" And I said sure. So I would go there and start a laboratory.

TI: And so how many laboratories did you end up doing?

YU: Forty-one.

TI: Forty-one laboratories. And so how many people were working for you at that point?

YU: Four hundred and seventy-five.

TI: So this was a large business that you were running.

YU: Yeah. And we went from Fresno all the way up to Stockton, and then across to the Bay Area to Berkeley and all the Bay Area, San Francisco, down the peninsula.

TI: And what eventually happened to this business. Is it still running? Or what did you do with it?

YU: No, a guy came and wanted to buy it. And after looking at all the problems that we might have, I sold it to him.

TI: And how long, when was this? When did you sell this?

YU: In 1989.

TI: Okay, so quite, twenty, over twenty years ago.

YU: Twenty years.

TI: Wow. Okay.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 23>

TI: So I'm gonna now jump to another topic 'cause it's getting to the end of our interview. You know, a couple weeks ago I was in Los Angeles attending the Japanese American National Museum gala, and it was, this is 2012 and they honored Norm Mineta, who is from San Jose.

YU: Right.

TI: And you did the introduction for that, and I wanted to ask you, the role, or how you supported Norm, because Norm Mineta is a national figure, as a Japanese American, one of the most prominent Japanese Americans in the United States. And I just wanted to get a sense of how you supported Norm in his career.

YU: Well, one of the things that I learned was that you have to be politically involved with what's going on around you, otherwise things happen and you are ignorant and many politicians write legislation and policy, and you're sunk because they are passed. So I always felt that we should be politically strong. And I remember, and I.K. Ishimatsu, who was a farmer here, he also, I got to know him well, and he felt the same way that I did and so we got to be very good friends. And he said, "We got to find somebody." So we kept looking at people, but there was not the kind of charisma that would get anybody, make a good politician. Norm, we had Norm in our mind. He was a high school kid, elected to student body president and next thing you know he went to Cal, he graduated Cal and he's in, went to Korea, and he's back, so... but in the meantime, we got to know some of the people on the city council, and this was, I think, the key. We got to know these guys, and there was an opening and we went right to the guy and says, "What are the chances of your appointing Norm Mineta?" They say, "Well, everybody's telling..." I said, "I think we need a good person on the council and I think Norm would be good." So I.K., we, it was more I.K. 'cause he was older and we sort of gave him to speak, and he had a Japanese accent, but he was very strong. Then Norm got appointed. 'Course, a lot of people didn't like it because they think it was not, the Japanese were not that well, you might, assimilated. But he, Norm did a very good job. He was well liked by the council people, so next election he had no problem getting elected to that same position. And from there, he went to become a mayor, and when he ran for mayor he got the endorsement of many of the council people. And when he ran for Congress, he, we had to raise funds and it was, not easy, but we were able to go to all the Nikkeis, Niseis and friends that we had, and what we could do, we helped him. So that's how.

TI: That's a great story about how he got started, because it led to a pretty amazing career.

YU: Oh yeah. And we felt that there's, I always felt that you had to be politically involved and be... because during the, right after the war, not right after the war, after the war started, we had all these writers, syndicated writers, we had Henry McLemore, Westbrook Pegler, they were well known writers and they wrote, they didn't write the truth. They all wrote wrong things.

TI: Very anti-Japanese.

YU: Anti, very, very anti-Japanese. And also we had other, let's see, politicians that would get up there and say, "We have to remove them out of here. Look at what, look at this, they're saboteurs, they're surrounding all their airports." These kind of things. And they would, and they would get elected on that.

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 24>

TI: So Yosh, I'm gonna end this interview. This is kind of the fun part for me because for the last three hours we've been talking about your life, and now I have a pretty good sense of the arc of your life, and one of the themes that comes up for me when I think about you is you don't let obstacles get in your way. I mean, you, I think, have a pretty optimistic or do something attitude about things. And I just wanted to ask you, so what is it about you that helps you do things like the things you've done? Like the judo, the medical laboratories, all pretty amazing accomplishments, what makes you different from other people?

YU: [Laughs] I don't think I'm any different except that I, one of the things that, when I was a kid, my mother used to say, "You go to get an education and you can do anything. You have to have this strength. You have to be strong, but you also have to lead a good life, clean life, so that people don't, can't throw anything at you." And I sort of felt that I did lead a clean life. When I see some of these politicians and they try something and all these things come up, fall out, but also for the, I've always felt that you try to help people that are in distress and need help, and the Japanese, I felt we needed help and so we pulled together and tried to get all, all the Japanese to pull together so we can get something accomplished. And in doing that, like getting Miraido Village built, we had, I ran into a lot of obstacles in the city hall and everything, but I got to know these people politically as well, and I went with them to Beijing, I went with them to Japan, and I pointed out the things of Japan, the good things, and I said, "This is the kind of things that we need in Japantown." When they ran for office, we supported them, so because they knew, because I personally know that they feel the same way, they want an area that's nice and clean and safe, and I said Japantown can be nice and clean and safe, but we have to clean out, we need some help from the redevelopment, and we need help from small business, and all of these things like other places in San Jose has received. We don't, we haven't received anything, and Japantown here used to be a mudflat. It used to, it used to always flood, and I said we can't, and people, real estate guy says, "Send 'em to the Jap town there. They can live down there." Something like if you don't have any, if you don't have enough money or something. "Get a home down that way." I said, because we live that way, they think that's the kind of way we're happy with, and I said we got to fight this out and get out of this. And so, like I sort of take a lot of pride in the variety of it because that used to be nothing but a junk warehouse, and we were able to clean it out and we put retail apartments on, just like you see in Japan, like in Kyoto or something. I had shown the mayors, these are the kind of places, I took redevelopment director there and I said, "This is the kind of thing we would like to see in Japantown in San Jose." And it did work out.

TI: So this spirit you're talking about, in terms of fighting through obstacles, working together to improve these things, I hear stories from Niseis who talk about the Isseis did this, the Niseis did this, when you think about the future of the Japanese American community, where do you think it's gonna go? Do you think that same spirit is still here and will keep growing, or where do you think it's going?

YU: I think one of the things that you have to do is let them, today we have many, like Yonseis and they are married to some other race, but at the same time, you have to teach them some pride that you have Japanese blood in you. And to, like we went down to Norm Mineta's dinner in L.A., I took a bunch of people, and my nephew's, nephew and niece and -- I guess it's a grandnephew, great nephew -- went down. Now, my nephew and niece, both are PhD, academically they are right at the top, they got good jobs, everything, they do not know anything about the Japanese. They're great, they're, my grandnephew, great nephew, he doesn't know anything. So when I took him down there he was amazed, and so were my nephew and niece. They were amazed 'cause they had never participated in anything like that. So now they start to see what the Japanese in the past have done and accomplished, and why they're there, in a good paying position.

TI: So in the future, how will the story stay alive? I mean --

YU: Well, I, the way I feel, you have to get in there and bring people in. Right now I'm working with San Jose State professors. We got a lot of Nikkei professors there, and they don't, they don't intermingle with Japantown. They're academic there. But I'm trying to bring 'em down here, let them get involved in Yu-Ai Kai, the Buddhist Church, JACL, everything, and start to learn a little bit about the Japanese. I told the JANM, the museum, same thing, you got to get more people in there. And they're doing that now, they're trying to do that, but you got to get 'em and give 'em responsibility. Most of 'em don't have any responsibility.

TI: So that's the key thing, just don't bring 'em in, but give 'em something to do.

YU: Something to do.

TI: That makes a difference, that's important.

YU: They're, the Sanseis have done well. The Nikkeis have suffered, worked hard, but the Isseis, of course, helped put the Niseis through, and the Niseis had to fight to get to where they are. Now the Sanseis are born, Sanseis, they go, they're probably the best educated group in America. They got everything, and they, financially they are well off. As citizens they are probably the top.

TI: So why don't you see more Sanseis more involved, then?

YU: I think we made a mistake in not bringing 'em in. The Sanseis, most of the Sansei, they want to be out there doing their own thing and they, we just let 'em do it. Then we find out that, god, we should, we need help. We need help to do this, we need help. We don't have anybody.

TI: But it's too late now. Or they're not, they're not connected.

YU: Yeah, so it might be too late, but I don't know, we're working on it. [Laughs]

TI: Interesting. No, thank you, that was good.

YU: I'm not sure that that's the whole answer, but it's a, I tell everybody, you got to get 'em in here. And we are a bunch of smart guys at San Jose State, all with PhD's, but I don't know where the heck they're hiding. [Laughs]

TI: Well, sometimes I think they're, they may be book smart but not street smart.

YU: No, they're, you're right. They're not street smart. [Laughs]

TI: Okay. So Yosh, thank you so much for doing this.

YU: You're welcome.

TI: This was really enjoyable for me. I learned a lot and it was just fun.

YU: I hope you got something from it. [Laughs]

TI: No, this was good, so thank you very much.

YU: Okay, yeah.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.