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TI: Going back to the, you said group gangs, tell me how they were structured. Like, generally how large, were they from the same original city, or the age group? Tell me a little bit more about that.

SY: I can't honestly answer that other than there was a guy named Dive Bomber. He was not a tall gentleman, but his body was shaped like a V, and maybe that's where he got the "Dive Bomber." And everybody talked about him, that he was strong and vicious and loved to fight, so whenever we saw him, we steered away from him because we didn't want to antagonize him, although I'm sure he's not gonna fight somebody a lot younger than we were, we're talking about high school age. And the Los Angeles group had a group that hung together. Depends on where you live. I'm sure the San Jose people stuck together. And I remember there was a fellow by the name of Min Ando, he was from San Jose, and in the bathroom there was a whole, maybe about three or four guys coming and asking us, "Where does Min Ando live?" And years later, when I saw him at a Heart Mountain reunion, I said, "What were they mad about you?" I says, "I never could understand. You seemed like such a nice, easy-going guy and everything." Well, he was too embarrassed to talk about it, so I don't know what actually happened, or what made 'em angry, but some of the older gang guys, they used to hang around the canteen, not looking for trouble, it was a social thing. And dances was a big thing with the older teenagers, especially with the military people coming back from furlough, and, although we were too young to dance, we were curious because, why did they put the lights so dim, and we were curious to see, oh, what's going on, you know? And how close are they dancing, and all this kind of stuff. But we were kids, we were just curious about those things.

TI: Okay.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.