<Begin Segment 20>

JI: And I did social work in a, in a settlement house, this was what, what the College Summer Service group people did. I remember a great girl from Wenatchee was there, who took the bus all the way across the country. And...

TI: And so what part of New York were you doing this social work?

JI: Well, it was in, scared the hell out of my wife when I drove her through there several years later. [Laughs] She rolled up all the windows. It was East Harlem, which at that time was transitional between Italian Harlem and Puerto Rican Harlem. And the Italians were being replaced by Puerto Ricans, essentially, and the settlement house served everybody. And they were great institutions, they were kind of a New York invention. (Narr. note: Hull House in Chicago may have been earlier.) And kids from the College Summer Service group, there must have been seventeen, or fifteen, sixteen, seventeen of us, and we were scattered around the city at different settlement houses, there were probably four or five at Union, and we stayed there, and it was a very hot part of summer. And I did mostly work in the playground with the kids, and often we'd take excursions out of the city and all that. And I remember one time we went on the spur of the moment, we went out to Central Park, which was about three blocks away. And three of us were supposed to go with about fifty kids, and the other two were women, they wound up with about five kids, and I wound up with the rest. And we were walking -- it didn't bother me, but we were walking through there, and one time, a little girl, a Puerto Rican, black kid, tried to kiss her. And so immediately, police are there, and I said, "Okay, I'll take care of this," and went up to the policeman. He said, "Who the hell are you?" [Laughs] And I said, "Well, I'm the leader of this group, from the settlement house," and explained the situation to him. And he says, "Where's your draft card?" And I had, of course, left the draft card in, 'cause I didn't know we were going to come out of the settlement house. I says, "Well, it's back in the settlement house," and he said, "Well, you're going to have to come in with me." And all the kids are staring like this, says, "Okay," and then the guy looked around and he says, "Oh, it'd be bedlam," if I'm hauled off. [Laughs] So they said, "Okay, you can go, but be sure to carry that with you all the time. Said, "You're supposed to have that on your person."

TI: Now, did he know that you were Japanese American?

JI: Oh, yeah, he could see it. I presume he assumed it, 'cause I told him my name, for one thing.

TI: But the idea of having, like, forty kids running loose in Central Park. [Laughs]

JI: Yeah, it's different from now where they'll shoot first. The police now are more trigger-happy.

TI: So he used a little judgment there, realizing it would be bedlam to leave those kids there, that's funny.

JI: And so anyway, that was one experience.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.