<Begin Segment 4>

MA: So let's talk a little bit about your high school experience. So where did you start off in high school?

YA: I went... I started with Broadway High School. My sister was going to Garfield and all my classmates from Washington were going to Garfield. But the city had changed the boundaries of where you lived. You had to live south of this... or north of Fourteenth Avenue in order to go to Garfield High School. We lived south of it, so I had to go to Broadway. And I was not too happy there. I borrowed... after one semester, I borrowed my, my parents' friends' address and I went to Garfield and I got in.

MA: What were the big differences between Broadway and Garfield?

YA: Oh, just my friends. And Broadway was practically all Nisei. There were many Niseis there that I didn't even know. I would say at least a third of the school was Nisei. Maybe I'm wrong, but there were many, many Nisei students there.

MA: And what about Garfield?

YA: Garfield... not too many, but my friends were there.

MA: How were the Nisei students at Garfield treated by the white students?

YA: Well, we stayed together, we kept together. We couldn't, we didn't associate with the other students at all, white students. It was kind of understood. You couldn't hold office, it was understood. We couldn't go to the prom because it was held in a country club. And even if you were white and Catholic, you couldn't attend the prom. You had to be white and Anglo-Saxon. That's how discriminatory it was. And it was a fact of life in those days. You have to remember -- well, you can't remember, but in the '20s and '30s, it was a way of life. The whites were the dominant people.

MA: And you mentioned it was sort of this unspoken... everyone sort of knew that.

YA: Yes, knew. You knew your place.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.