<Begin Segment 16>

TI: Other, other things that were perhaps dangerous, you're ten, eleven, that age, I mean, what were some other activities, maybe, like, in the summertime that you...

SY: Okay, we had what we call "cut the pie." We just make a, it depends on how many people involved, but usually two people, we challenge each other, we make a great big circle and we make a line in the middle, and each of us have a knife. If we stick it in their territory, we cut the area where the line goes, and we take the biggest property, and erase the one, so now we have three-quarters of the property. And then, if we throw the knife and it doesn't stick, it's the other person's turn, so if he sticks it, depends on if the line connects with his property, then he could take a lot of the property.

TI: So essentially you're trying to, to minimize, or shrink your opponent's area?

SY: To a point where it's so small that, you know, you no longer could stick the knife in. And that was kind of a dangerous sport, but we enjoyed it because it was a game of skill. Another game we did was, on the table, we spread our fingers, and we would get a knife and go boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom all the way back, with the hopes that you don't stick yourself. And, as you get better, we go a little faster, and... to a point where the person that could do it the fastest would have the reputation of being the best.

TI: So you would sometimes race each other, or time each other and see who's the fastest?

SY: Oh, yeah. I know it sounds corny, but we had things that we, that we just automatically did, you know.

TI: Yeah, and then you also mentioned the Scouts, so you were part of a scout, I think you said 333, so talk, talk about that. What were some of the scouting activities?

SY: Well, number one, the leaders wanted us to at least become a First Class, or a minimum of Tenderfoot, so you have to learn the knots and you have to memorize the Scout oath, so it was like a one-on-one situation. You had, like a counselor teaching you, because they want everybody -- and they had this board, and it's a check-off list. At one of the Heart Mountain reunions, Kaz Shiroyama said, "You weren't in our troop." I said, "Well, Akira Yoshimura brought me in." He said, "Well, here's a picture of Akira, so, he was in Troop 333 -- but your name isn't on there." And then Akira said, "Well, wasn't your name Okada?" I says, "Yeah, all the social activities and in my block I was known as Shigeru Okada, but for the school activities, official activities, I was Shigeru Yabu." But the irony of the Yabu was -- remember I was telling you I never had Levi's, so I always had holes in my pants, whether, depends on what sports we played. My mother always patched it up. So, ironically, "yabu" means "torn," so my nickname was Yabureta Pantsu, so even now some of my old friends say "Hey, Yabureta Pantsu," and we laugh at that because, how do you remember that name, you know? Well, Yabu, Yabureta Pantsu.

And so marble was a big, big game. We played fish, we played chase, and somebody came up with a great idea. At the beginning, our barracks, people used to complain how cold it was because the bottom was open, because they had bricks holding up and the bottom was open, and they complained about the cold. And eventually they put dirt all the way around, which prevented the wind to come in at the bottom, but then somebody came up with the idea of making little trenches, and you played marbles, as long as you stay on the trench, and then the idea is to stick it in a little hole, like pool game. So you go through the whole course, and some people would even have little bridges made. Or you could go from here to here, but, if you missed, you had to start from the beginning.

TI: And this was, like, underneath the barracks?

SY: No. You know where that dirt mound I was talking was slanted? Well, you made the mound on the slanted dirt.

TI: I see, so on kind of the perimeter.

SY: Yes. But people were very creative. Each one, each block had different types of creativity. They said, "Oh, the guy in Block 7, you should see his," so we'd go see theirs and copy their ideas and so forth. It was a fun activity.

TI: That's, I never heard, that's a good one.

SY: So we had a lot of marbles in our pockets, you know, and I don't know who the losers were, but...

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.