<Begin Segment 11>

MN: So now, once you graduated from First Street Grammar School you mentioned you went to Stevenson Junior High School and then you were elected the social studies president.

AM: Oh, yeah. [Laughs]

MN: Now, how did that come about and what did you have to do as the president?

AM: Well, I was very active, I guess, in some ways of trying to have the class doing other things. Well, the reason for that was because the upbringing that I had in Japan where we had to do a lot of things to, for the community and things like that, so... and being the president of the class, too, was kind of a pride to me because of all the things that happened in Japan. Well, in mathematics I was much more advanced than a lot of the students because I knew so much more because of training I had in Japan, so they kind of, people kind of thought that I should run for something in the class, so I did. And so that's how I got involved with being on the, well, as a president of the class and things like that. I guess it kind of gave me pride in things like that.

MN: Now, from Stevenson you went to Roosevelt High.

AM: Yes.

MN: Did you join the Japanese club at Roosevelt High?

AM: You know, I don't think I was able to. I wanted to, but since I did live close to Roosevelt High School soon as I finished Roosevelt I had to go to Japanese school and things like that, so I didn't have much chance to do anything at high school.

MN: But you had a hobby. You liked to make model airplanes.

AM: Yes.

MN: Can you share with us how you became interested in this hobby and were you in a club?

AM: Yes. When I lived on Evergreen, this, Mrs. Hochi had a son. He was also interested in making model airplanes. He was very good at it. He used to design his own plane and fly it and he used to win tournaments and things, like a contest, photo, airplane contest which was held every month, was sponsored by the Los Angeles Examiner. It was in Gardena. Western Avenue, there was an airport there and we used to go fly airplanes over there for the monthly contest. And this, his name was Kenichi Hochi, and he used to win some prizes with his plane, so I got to know him, so he got me interested in making model airplanes, so I did make some model airplanes. And I liked to do things like that, so I was very fortunate to have a friend like Ken Hochi.

MN: I imagine this was a very expensive hobby. How did you get money to buy the kits?

AM: [Laughs] Well, we tried to make the airplane the most economical way, so we used to buy each part by itself, little by little, and then construct the thing without making, buying a kit or anything like that. When you do that it costs you a lot of money, so we used to make everything ourselves. Even, we used to carve our own propeller to make our own, carve out of wood to make our own propeller, which was very difficult to do and not too many people did that, but Ken and I used to work together and try to make our own propeller and things like that. And so he was trying to do things very economically, too, so we worked together trying to make things so it won't cost us too much to keep the hobby up, and so... oh, and now and then he used to win the airplane contest which was help monthly by the Examiner and so we kept doing that.

MN: Were you in a club?

AM: I forget. Yeah, there was a club in Boyle Heights. I forget the name of the club, but I'm trying to think of what it was, but it was, it consisted of people, young boys in Boyle Heights. In fact, there was a fellow named Andrew Peterson who used to sell these parts as his business and he was part of the club, too. So I used to go to him to buy all the airplane parts and he, he would give us everything very cheaply so we could afford it. So that's how Ken and I used to keep the hobby going. And then eventually when the gasoline motor came out we both started doing that and that's when it started costing quite a bit more to make a model airplane because we had to make a bigger airplane, which meant it cost more to make. But we kept it up for a few years, but then eventually we got much older for doing that, so we stopped doing it.

MN: Now, what was the ethnic makeup of your club?

AM: It was mostly, well, there were a few Japanese, about three or four, and then the rest of 'em were Caucasian or Mexicans or thing like that.

MN: Now you mentioned Gardena. Was this Mines Field that you went out to to test out your planes?

AM: No, there was an airport, what is now, it's not airport anymore, but there used to be a small airport there and there was a, there weren't that many buildings in Gardena those days. It was, a lot of it was farm area, so it was pretty wide open, so that's why we decided to go to, all the way to Gardena, because the club we belonged to, this one fellow had a car, so he used to take us on his car. And so it was on Rosecrantz and Western Avenue. It was a very wide open area and it was in the airport, small airport, but then it was such a small airport there weren't that many airplanes flying from there, so we used to fly our model airplanes there. And then we used to sometimes, you know when you take a plane and go up real high, sometimes there's an air current that carries your plane far away, so we used to follow that quite a, quite a ways and sometimes we'd even lose sight of it, but we always managed to somehow get it back. And we have to run, run all over the place trying to keep up with the plane.

MN: Now, did you know Takashi Hoshizaki before the war? He was also into model airplanes, but he lived in Hollywood area.

AM: His name was...

MN: Takashi Hoshizaki.

AM: I can't recall that name.

MN: Now you had this model airplane hobby, were you interested in photography at all?

AM: After doing all those model airplanes and then when I went to Roosevelt High School I took up a class in photography and that's when I started to go into photography more.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.