Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Kara Kondo Interview
Narrator: Kara Kondo
Interviewers: Alice Ito (primary), Gail Nomura (secondary)
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: December 7 & 8, 2002
Densho ID: denshovh-kkara-01-0016

<Begin Segment 16>

AI: Well, in your high school years, I was wondering what kind of activities you were involved in? I think you started mentioning earlier about the young people's Christian organization?

KK: Yes. They had the young people's Christian organizations that to an extent it may exist today. Not to the same degree, but the Protestant churches throughout the Northwest would have a yearly, what they called the Young People's Christian Association. And I'm sure they did at the Buddhist church, would meet at different areas, whether it was Spokane or Portland... Seattle. We had several in Wapato. And we would get together and have just, I'm sure that hasn't, that kind of format hasn't changed that great a deal. It's mainly so that the young people can get together. And it was a form of socialization as well as a religious activity. And it was, I think, these activities within organizational, brought out the leadership among the Niseis. They took on certain kinds of responsibility and continued them. That helped them, whatever organizations they participated in later. The other form was the various athletic competitions, which, including judo, kendo, and the baseball and basketball teams.

GN: How about girls? What kind of sports did they play?

KK: Nothing. [Laughs] It was a spectator sport, I think. I did, I became knowledgeable about baseball because I kept score and sent it as a correspondent to the, I think it was the North American Post. I was just reading out there where it was a hundred years, and so it must have been the Post. And I would send that in. And later I was a scorekeeper, and I can still enjoy baseball because I know much more about it than, it was my training of keeping score for the Wapato Nippons.

GN: Wasn't there a girls' basketball league?

KK: I think that we tried, but it never took off very well. There might have been, you may have read about it. [Laughs] And somehow it gets mixed up with my junior high school days. Whether it was, was it a school activity or was it a Japanese activity? I can't remember. But I know I must not have been very good at it or else have more memories of it. [Laughs]

AI: What were some of your other school activities?

KK: The school activities were somewhat limited because we took the bus in and, and, and they didn't make way for after school activities as the emphasis is now. And so we... I can't remember being that active in school activities. I remember being in an operetta. Of course, it was one of the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas in junior high school. And, but I don't remember being very active in school.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.