<Begin Segment 12>

DG: So you delivered newspapers and then... so then your friends were, friends were like hakujin friends?

BU: Hakujin or...

DG: But then did you go, here, when you came back here did you socialize with the Japanese community again?

BU: Yeah, because we went into sports and then Boy Scouts.

DG: Boy Scouts where?

BU: Came back and I went to Baptist church, Troop 53 Boy Scouts.

DG: That was all Japanese?

BU: Yeah, all Japanese. And then the Courier League baseball team, league, was all Japanese, and I went and played baseball. You know what? One thing that the Isseis did for us, they said that, "We're going to get athletic league, baseball, basketball, football, so you keep busy." The young people will be so busy they can't get in trouble, which is true. Back then they said Japanese is exemplary group, ethnic group, they never get into trouble. Well, that's fine for that period, but now we have to reestablish that thing. The Sansei thing that we talked about, we're trying to, I'm trying to get an athletic league started to keep these kids busy, keep them out of drugs, and having too much time to get in trouble because one of the thing that we have to worry about the Sansei is the drug scene. There is a lot more Nisei, Sanseis and Niseis into the drug scene than you will know. Most people do not know this. All you have to do is go up to the methadone clinic up on Thirty-fourth and East Union. Out of the fifty or sixty kids that go up there every day for their methadone dose, thirty-some odd are Nihonjin.

DG: No kidding.

BU: That's sad, really. And you know the sad part, they're kids of people I know very well, some of them.

DG: So you think that the Issei back then -- we're talking about the early '30s -- they had this vision that they needed to work with the young people?

BU: They did. I got to know Jim Sakamoto and he interviewed me on two, three occasions, partly when I graduated high school and then after I went to college, and we were talking about these things because he was talking to me to educate me, but also to get me to help. He says, "If you don't keep the kids busy doing something useful or something they like, they're going to get into things that they're not supposed to." You see, he spent a lot of his life in New York City, Jim Sakamoto, and he was a boxer. The reason why he became blind was because he got poked in the eye so much that he lost his eyesight. Anyway, so...

DG: Well, he had a really clear vision for the young people.

BU: He did. James Sakamoto was great. He did things that no one else did. The Japanese Chamber of Commerce did, too, but he was personal. He'd call you into his office and talk to you. So that another way he was trying to make it personal for him and you. The Japanese Issei people, a lot of them, they were great because know what the Nisei, Issei males what they did? Every Sunday, Saturday and Sunday, they go to different ball fields, like Columbia Playfield always had a game, Broadway Playfield always had. So they all, hundreds of them would come and watch them play. In other words, they are supporting the effort that you put in, and the newspaper did a great thing because I was watching. Every week I'd, I'd watch watch the...

DG: This is the Courier?

BU: Watch the Courier League, watch your, watch your batting average. The thing about the batting average that is so fascinating was the fact that at the time when the FBI investigated all of us, that character, that character that investigated me knew exactly what my batting average was. They told you, "Hey you, your batting average is too darn low so don't remember. Forget it." [Laughs] I never thought about this for fifty years, but I was thinking about it right now. He told me I was .225 or something. [Laughs]

DG: Boy, they really did a thorough job investigating you guys. [Laughs]

BU: Yeah, they knew everything, everything that I had.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.