Densho Digital Archive - Roger Shimomura Interview (denshovh-sroger-01-0016)

<Begin Segment 16>

AI: Well, you had mentioned a little bit about how close-knit the Japanese American community could be and I was just wondering how active you and your family were as far as community activities and whether --

RS: It was all through the church. And there was a time that I was very active Methodist Youth Fellowship and most of my social life was tied up through the church. And this was high school and early parts of college, going to these conferences in Spokane or in Tacoma where other Methodist Churches were. And all of these socials were held at the gyms of the Japanese Baptist Church, Japanese Buddhist Church, Japanese Methodist, Congregational, Lutheran, Episcopalian. Japanese community had all of those churches and they each had their own gyms because there was a basketball league that I was partaking in as well. But all of the socials were at the various churches and they would happen maybe every other week. And so that was a way for the different church communities to meet each other as well. And so it was a very important part of, of our social life. I mean, there are a lot of things that I recall, the Buddhist Church, the Skyliners, for example, I remember a guy named Victor Iwata that used to... it wasn't Victor, it was his younger brother, Jimmy Iwata, that used to have this incredible sort of Elvis, Fabian hairdo, and used to dance like him, you know, he was sort of the star of all these churches and things like that. And I think that that tended to really socially, at least, solidify the Japanese American community. Because the Chinese were also having their dances but it wasn't the same. You didn't feel like that was really home. And so by the time I got to college I really wasn't active in church, but I still going to these dances. And they were being held by, usually, since they were a fairly new thing, culturally, it seemed like my age group was sort of on the cusp of that and was the ones that were responsible for the music and the food and all of that kind of stuff. So by the time I got to college most of those dances were college-age kids. And that's where you worked out these dance routines with each other, in each other's rec room. You'd get together and do these things and then you'd actually dance them when you went to these church dances, and sort of a big show-off thing as well.

AI: And so this would be in the later '50s since you, you graduated from high school in '57.

RS: Right.

AI: So when you were in high school it was still mid- to late-'50s and...

RS: Right.

AI: ...so some of the music that you would have at that time was, Elvis was big and...

RS: Right, right. I'd say it was more the late '50s when I started college very intensely for a period of maybe one to two years. It seems like it was drawn out, but I, that's actually, actually went all the way through college and post-college because that's where I met my wife, I believe.