<Begin Segment 8>

AI: I'm -- oh, excuse me. I was just going to ask you, at about this time, you had just gone through tremendous changes in your living situation. You had gone from being in this camp with all these other Japanese Americans and Japanese Peruvians and their parents and other prisoners of war, their families who were German or Italian.

JY: Uh-huh.

AI: But primarily you were around people of Japanese ancestry, and then you were out in Cincinnati. It sounds like you were one of very few Japanese Americans.

JY: The only. I think I was the first Asian that most of the people in that little town of Terrace Park had ever seen, let alone a Japanese American. So, yeah, it was different. But, you know, I -- it's funny. I don't remember being -- I can remember being, people being kind of, you know, overly nice sometimes and that kind of thing, but the only times I can remember that anything from a, from a racial standpoint happened besides that, besides that little fight that I had was, was both times when associated with, with baseball, I think, when I was playing. I can recall one time when we played a team and we won, and I think it was some kind of a playoff to go to the next level or something, and the, and the coach on the other team was really mad, and, and he said something like, "Well, at least we don't have any Japs playing on our team," kind of a comment, and it kind of startled me. And, you know, our coach came and said all kinds of nice things and so forth, but other than an isolated instance like that, I just don't recall any, you know, huge thing occurring that I can think of during that time period of anything adverse. And, of course, I knew I was different, but it -- somehow it, I don't recall it really affecting my behavior or -- except, except the old business about "Don't bring shame on the fa-," you know, that kind of stuff that was, that had been ground into me, I think from the time I was a little baby.

So the days in Cincinnati were pretty good. The, the only downfalls I can remember is like when I had got cut from the freshman baseball team it was just devastating to me because I always thought I was such a hotshot -- [laughs] -- and then I didn't make the team. So and all my -- the guys I played with on that one team were -- I think seven out of nine of 'em made the team, and it was just this one other guy and myself that didn't, so we were both devastated. But that didn't -- you know, that's another side of things, I guess. But other than that, my days, you know -- and, and, and, and the, and the fact that my parents were struggling to -- as domestics, it was, it was not a bad, bad time period for me. My best friend at the second home was a, was from -- in fact, it was a fairly -- there were a lot of Jewish families there. It was kinda like a Jewish neighborhood where I lived, and, you know, so my best friend was Jewish and I used to spend a lot of time at his house. And it was -- there was something, some kind of connect between a Jewish family and Japanese families. I felt very comfortable there, and her mother would nag like my mother would nag and it was just kinda like the same thing, so I, I felt very comfortable. And those were pretty, pretty good days for me.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.