<Begin Segment 7>

TI: By being the only Japanese, did you ever feel sort of singled out or discriminated against?

AA: Oh, yes, at first I did. When I first went there, the kids used to pick on me because they, I was different. But my dad told me to keep a low profile, don't make any trouble. And so they kept on picking on me, and I didn't retaliate. Finally, I got to the point where I had to do something, so I said, "Okay, I'm gonna put an end to this. Who wants to take me on?" And the biggest guy, he decided he'd take me on. I, we were wrestling, and (recall) my dad had taken me to some of these judo practices, and so I just grabbed a hold of his collar and proceeded to choke him. And he was hollering, "Unfair, unfair," and I said, "What's unfairness got to do with it?" and I kept, and I says, "Give up? Give up?" And he finally says, "Yeah, okay, I give up," he was getting kind of blue in the face. [Laughs] And then, so I let him up and I says, "Okay, who's next?" [Laughs] Nobody wanted to take me on, 'cause I had beaten the biggest bully there. After that, I got along fine with all the other kids.

TI: Oh, that's a good story. So it took standing up to these bullies to actually get them to stop bothering you.

AA: Yes. But I caught hell from my parents. My sister told them I was in a fight. [Laughs]

TI: Even after you explained to your parents why you had to do it?

AA: Yeah.

TI: They still thought that was wrong?

AA: Yeah. But anyway, I got along fine, and I eventually got to be a leader in a number of activities. I was captain of the track team, captain of the soccer team, and captain of the School Boy Patrol, and president of the Boys Club. My academics were not that great when I first went there, but towards the end, I was an excellent student.

TI: And I'm curious, some of the boys that were part of that group that bothered you, after that incident, later on, did some of them become your friends?

AA: Oh, I don't recall the bully ever becoming my friends, but I had a lot of friends that were... you know, Lowell school was on the border of all the wealthy people up on Federal Way, and we were on the fringes. And so I had a lot of friends that were from wealthy family. Like the Schaefers, the Schaefers owned the Schaefer Building downtown, and their parents drove the kids to school with a chauffeur. And I believe a fellow named David Ernst, he was somewhat related to the Ernst Hardware. And there was a girl named Virginia Simpson that was part of the Simpson Lumber family. And so I went to school with a lot of the wealthy old-time families.

TI: 'Cause you know, you're right, when I think, again, geographically Seattle, Lowell is located near a lot of what I would call mansions.

AA: Yes, that's right.

TI: And so the families there would send their children to Lowell, and then you would interact with them. Did you get a sense of a class difference with these individuals? Did, was, in school, was there like a differentiation between the wealthy and the not so wealthy?

AA: I sensed that there was a difference, 'cause we had two, two classes of the same class. They had us segregated, and it seems to me that all the kids in my class were from the lower side. There were a few that were in my class, but all the more elite kids were in the other half.

TI: Did you get a sense that the, the other class got better, maybe, resources than your class?

AA: Well, I think they were the same.

TI: But yet, you felt like there was... did, do you ever recall your classmates in your class ever talking about the other class in a different way?

AA: No, I... the only thing that, the reason I felt that way is that the majority of the kids in my class were down in the, lived in the south end of the district.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.