<Begin Segment 24>

TI: So as you were growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, you got there when you were ten, and you went through schooling. What was life like for you growing up in Cleveland during this time?

RE: You know, as I became a teenager, I think prior to that it was always a fear that instilled in us that we, we need to be model students in school. And so it was, we made every attempts to do that. But you know, for me, I wanted to assert myself as to who I am. I got into the wrong crowd of guys, we grew up in Cleveland's inner city, eventually we moved from the west side to east side. So got into a lot of trouble and that, but other than that, I didn't excel as a student, I didn't want to. It was not a matter of I lacked any intelligence, I just didn't want to do anything.

TI: And how did your parents handle that?

RE: Shipped me out to California, a one-way ticket after I graduated from high school, to work with relatives in Sacramento.

TI: So let's, if you don't mind, let's talk about that a little more. So you said you got into this, the wrong crowd, east side. So who were some of your friends, when you say "wrong crowd"?

RE: They weren't bad, but we'd get into mischief, but we also got into things. I would say in our teen years we stole upwards of three hundred pairs of hubcaps and cars, you know, to satisfy the need for a junkyard dealer out of town. We did things that were literally criminal acts.

TI: So when you say with a junkyard --

RE: It was five, six of us.

TI: And so the junkyard dealer would essentially let you guys know what he was looking for?

RE: What he needed. Whatever automobile parts that was accessible to us to take apart, we did that.

TI: And then he would just pay you cash for, for these things.

RE: And we split the money.

TI: And eventually, did you get in trouble with the authorities?

RE: They never caught up with us on that. There were other issues that I don't want to talk about.

TI: Okay. Did your, did your parents kind of know what you were doing?

RE: Yeah, I was branded in the Japanese community as a good-for-nothing. That's why when I was running around with my wife in junior high school, that was the end of that. Her mom and dad said, "You're not going around with him anymore."

TI: Oh, so you started dating your wife in junior high school.

RE: Oh, yeah. We'd known each other growing up for years. So I was bent on marrying her one day, and I did. [Laughs]

TI: But you had such a reputation in the community that this other family said they didn't want...

RE: The bad boy.

TI: Was that just you, or your siblings, too?

RE: No, just me. You know, there's always someone who will come along like me in the Japanese community that's gonna say, "Okay, I'm not like the rest of you," and I guess there was a chip on my shoulder. But I'd come to the realization when I was in the service that, "What is life about?" I can't forever be getting into trouble. I even got in trouble in Sacramento, they shipped me out to Lake Tahoe. It was just like, you know, then I come to the realization that it's me, was the fomenter, the troublemaker, and life can't go on anymore.

TI: And so when you were, as, when you were kind of going through this troubled times, what were you thinking? Were you...

RE: I wanted to be like all my friends, my Caucasian friends.

TI: And what was that like?

RE: I resented the fact when I look in the mirror that I was, had an Asian face. I resented my parents, because they brought me into this world. I think there was this, I couldn't connect.

TI: So you were angry, it sounds like.

RE: I was an angry young man for being who I was.

TI: Well, and going through your life, there were lots, there was a lot of antagonism towards you. You know, from...

RE: But still, still, I don't know how much that had to do with what I did later, growing up in my later formative years. But I resented the fact that my, when I looked back, that my mother would yell at me in Japanese on the porch when I'd be out with my friends, and I hated that. I hated her to speak Japanese to my friends, yelling and screaming things, 'cause I did some things bad. So I guess that resentment was of the fact that, who I was. I wasn't proud of who I was. I'm sure there were other Niseis who went through those things, times in their lives, I think.

TI: Yeah.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.