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MA: And what, what sorts of things did you do for fun in high school with your friends?

GY: Well, I used to... although I was invited, I used to go to... not the sorority dances. I guess were, the hakujin people were lot of your dances. We had what we called Natatorium Park here by Spokane River. It was a big dance hall that held generally around two thousand people. And you would have Benny Goodman, Charlie Barnett, Charlie Spivak, Tommy Dorsey, the other Dorsey, all these various -- Glenn Miller, all these famous orchestras of that era come into town. And I was a lousy dancer, poor dancer, but we would go to these, you know, you'd get a date and go to Natatorium Park. I remember one time Benny Goodman came into town, and it was so packed with people that the floor caved in. It was on stilts, I guess, but anyway, the floor dropped and they had to get a big floor jack to jack that place up, and I think something about Benny Goodman says, "I'll be darned," if he ever came back to Spokane again. He was disappointed. And they had jackrabbits there, jackrabbit being roller cars. You know, you go down, come back up in these various roller cars, you shoot .22, it's like a, not a vaudeville, like a small circus, carnival, but that was a permanent stay there. You took the streetcar there or your own car. I remember riding the streetcar there and then enjoying the festivities. Get a free ticket for the roller coaster, yeah, I had a lot of fun on that roller coaster. And bumper cars, another area was we had a huge, Olympic-size swimming pool, swam in it a few times. It was enclosed, I mean, you know.

And that was part of the fun that we used to enjoy, going to Nat Park, going to the dances, and among other things, fishing, for me. I kind of remember a small, juvenile-only creek. I used to be on all fours and crawl to the edge of this small stream which is only a couple feet deep. Only juveniles were able to fish there. I used to ride my bicycle there all by myself, out in the country, and I used to see grasshoppers jump into the stream and all of a sudden be a flash, and the grasshopper would be gone. So I used to remember getting myself on all fours to catch grasshoppers in the fading light, throw 'em into the stream, and find out where these trout hid, under the bank as I remember. And I did that and impaled a grasshopper on a hook, and caught my first thirteen-, fourteen-inch rainbow trout. And anyway, I enjoyed fishing from even before then. I still do.

MA: So when you would go to the park or on these outings, was it mostly a group of Niseis that you would go with?

GY: Yeah, we, a bunch of us guys -- and I think it was generally guys, three, four, five of us, would go to a park, and we'd just sit on the ground with our bikes and talk. I don't remember what we even talked about, but we were just young Niseis. And we would carry a small knife, we would play Mumbleypeg. You know, you throw that knife, see if you can make it stick into the ground. All boys, whether Japanese or not, played Mumbleypeg and marbles. But I remember a number of times going to a park and just sitting there, just talking, you know. I don't know what we talked about, but just talking. And I, that was part of our fun. Fishing was, playing basketball on the various courts, dirt floor courts, even playing tennis. We all got into tennis, several of us guys that lived downtown, and we used to go to these parks. Primarily for downtown guys, we went to Brown's Addition in this area, matter of fact. There is a tennis court over here. We used to go there four, no, five, six, seven o'clock in the morning just to play tennis. I don't know why so early. After that we came in a little later, but we used to make dates with other gals to play tennis. I don't remember who they were, but we played tennis. And let's see. I can't remember any other form of entertainment. We used to go out to the lakes. Once we learned how to drive, go out to a lake and have a picnic out there at the lakes.

MA: Did many of the families own cars back then?

GY: Oh, yeah. My dad had a '37 Packard. I mean, it was a beautiful looking, like his majesty in England driving, with a driver. This kind of car, Packard, it was a good-looking car. Outbreak of war, we had to sell that. We, I think we gave it away, practically. I think it was supposed to be worth, oh, car prices were getting in short supply because even before Pearl Harbor came along, the war effort was, like the automobiles were stopped, sort of. Stopped making it and went into building tanks because cars were hard to come by. You couldn't buy a new car. And even used cars were going at a high price, and my car, which was a '37 Plymouth, I bought for three hundred and fifty dollars working at Great Northern, saving money. Three hundred and fifty dollars, it had a new, brand-new motor installed, and that was during the war years. I bought it for three hundred and fifty dollars, and they offered me eight hundred dollars, oh, I don't know, after Pearl Harbor came along. But yeah, we went all over in our bikes before we owned cars, and then cars, they just made more opportunity for us to go to these various lakes.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.