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AI: And so where did -- where in Los Angeles did you live when you moved there?

GY: We stayed in East Los Angeles, I think the Nagao family and his business was in East LA somewhere. And there was, at that time, many, many other families in East LA. East LA, which is also called Boyle Heights, actually. It was called Boyle Heights, that area. Mexicans, and not too far away, Brooklyn Avenue was the area where many immigrant Jews lived, Jewish families and their children lived.

So we had, again, a new -- exposed us to new groups of people there. And the Mexicans, especially the Mexican population there. Again, your world opened up a little bit larger. And it opened only -- not only but mainly because we grew older and become much more sensitive to the outside world. Again, movies, the radio, school, new faces enlarged the world. Many Niseis there, it was kind of interesting. When you move into a new area such as this, where there are, there were options in terms of ethnic and racial groups, and options in terms of making connections. In high school, for some reason, there were Japanese there, but somehow it's more difficult to move into the Japanese group. So most of my friend, many of my friends were Jewish kids. I spoke a little, I wouldn't say I spoke the language -- we all spoke English, but somehow I felt more comfortable with them. And I think this is true of... I don't know how to say. I hate to stereotype, but maybe it is stereotypical. But nevertheless, the Japanese are not that outgoing, and -- this is my observation. And I'm not either. They don't say, hey, welcome to the club kind of thing. They kind of look at you, and yeah, I kind of, that's about it.

So in the classrooms, I met Japanese friends -- rather, Jewish friends who, with whom I was -- became much more friendly. And Mexican friends, and in my chemistry class, Isadore Saltzman was my favorite -- my, my, I guess laboratory mate. He was smart as heck, and I wished, I wished that sometimes his smart, his smartness would sort of become part of me, but no, it didn't happen. [Laughs]. But, and then another friend, Murray Marks. Golly, he was so neat. Nice Jewish friend, Murray Marks. He taught me a Jewish poem, and I still remember it. This is way back in the 1940s -- "zal ze voxen, zal ze voxen a cemetery (off en kopf) and oyskocken taite menshen." And he said -- I don't know if the, well, certainly enunciation is not proper, but answered it with, and something about dead people, eating dead people or, or something like that, and shitting out the, eat -- zal ze voxen -- oh, yeah. (Building a cemetery in the head) and shitting out dead people, anyway. [Laughs] It was so neat to remember that. And, but that was a long time ago. That's sixty years ago. But Murray Marks taught it to me.

And I had Mexican friends, too. And that was kind of neat. His name is (Alfonso Salas). (Another) was a dark-skinned Mexican, but my friends said, "Chocolate." Chocolate kid, chocolate. Robert Pereslete, we call him -- I forgot the names, but Mexicans who were a little bit different -- we think when you say Mexico and immigrants, that people are just learning the language and having a hard time in learning to speak English. So for these kids, they were very fluent in English. So they spoke very little Spanish. And I got along very well with them. They were in the same classes, the same math classes, algebra classes, so they were a cut above whoever they might be. And I had some close friends in there.

And then I made some friends, especially in the orchestra because I played, by then I was playing the baritone sax in high school. I had learned alto sax in the, in high school mainly. And in the high school orchestral program, I met some real neat people. And my favorite was George Vaiana, who played the bassoon. And I played the baritone sax. I played next to him. So he became a very favorite friend of mine through the music. And I played the baritone saxophone very poorly, and I'd miss -- maybe, I'd play maybe 50 percent of the music, but nevertheless they needed another horn to augment the bassoon part. But that was kind of a neat experience, too. So through the music, I was able to enlarge my world with other non-Japanese folks, again soak in some of the culture, the Western culture, yeah.

AI: And this was in high school?

GY: High school, yeah.

AI: Which high school did you attend?

GY: Roosevelt High School. Again, a large population of Japanese Americans there, Niseis. The Jewish kids were really school leaders. And several Mexicans who became very much a part of the leadership program. Again, they had certain levels just like we had certain levels in our community, in the Mexican population. And they had people who were recent immigrants, and those people (who) were much more assimilated and so forth. And that's true of all immigrant groups.

Sometimes people forget today, especially Niseis and Sanseis don't realize the very limited background that we came from in terms of the American culture, we were immigrants with a different kind of language, different attitudes, et cetera, et cetera. And today, for example, you see there's a lot of anti-immigration feelings because of the sudden flux of certain groups of people. And we forget our early beginnings.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.