<Begin Segment 6>

TI: And you said the Japanese were good at basketball and football.

MN: Well, in the B leagues. There were a few in the varsity, too, and the football team, two Niseis on the varsity football team, none on the basketball. And the B football, for instance, that was all Japanese. And they went through the whole season un-scored upon, undefeated, and state champions. [Laughs] Half of 'em were Cougars.

TI: And when you say A versus B, was that just like varsity JV, or was it different weight classes?

CS: The size. They go by... B league, if they were good, they'll play on the varsity. But because of the size, they still could play, but in the lower division.

TI: And how about something like baseball? Was that dominated by a certain group?

CS: Baseball, they only had the varsity, and they had two Nisei on there. And I was too small, so I was the bat boy there.

TI: Okay. How about in terms of after school? What were some of the things that you did, things like Japanese school, did you go to?

CS: Yeah. My mother had a... it goes way back in the 1920s. The Nichiren temple came to Little Tokyo. So I still remember, it must have been in 1924, or '3, I used to go to Sunday school at Nichiren. And the priest there knew my mother, that she was a teacher, she went to teacher's school in Japan. So he asked her to be the Japanese school teacher at his temple. And when the Nichiren moved to Boyle Heights, they had a nice new building then, before it was a home, you know. And then my mother ran the Japanese school, teacher there. So that's where I kept going.

TI: And how was that, to have your mother be the Japanese language teacher?

CS: Well, she had an assistant, Aoyagi Sensei, and he knew that I liked baseball. So every Saturday, he always let me sneak out from the back window, practice with the group, sneak back in, and he never told my mother about that. [Laughs]

TI: And so your mother never knew.

CS: I told her much later, she was shaking her head.

TI: But she probably suspected when you came home with grass stains on your pants or something.

CS: Well, it was baseball. [Laughs]

TI: Yeah, that's a good story. But was there added pressure being the son of the language school teacher?

CS: No, because my mother had the school and my father had this kendo dojo. So our house was always filled with kids, and I was a Boy Scout leader. So they'll come, we had a big backyard on the hillside, and they'd come to pass the test, and I'll teach him, I don't know how to cook, but I had to teach them how to cook and all that. So the house was always filled with kids, and I had no problem.

TI: So it almost sounded like a mini community center almost.

CS: Something like that, yeah.

TI: With the Japanese language teacher and the kendo.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.