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TI: He also mentioned sometimes that the Seattle boys would try to get a sports team together and play the Hawaiians. Do you remember any of that? Did that ever happen? Because he also said the Seattle boys were really good athletes, and they would like to challenge in either football or baseball.

HY: I was never good at baseball, though. Yeah, I remember a guy that used to be with us, Matt Tanaka, Matsu Saburo Tanaka -- Tanaka, he was a good athlete. In fact, he was with the Cincinnati Reds (farm team), I think.

ME: Oh, okay. Because Kash was, in Seattle, he was a, sort of the quarterback of the city championship high school ...

KO: High school.

ME: Garfield High School.

HY: Yeah. That's what I heard.

TI: So he went to there, and I was thinking Mas Watanabe and some other ones who were pretty good athletes, and so they, when, he mentioned in Italy, there were times when they'd get together, just the Seattle boys. And then they would try to challenge the other teams. But he said that was special.

KO: In fact, the companies sometimes had scrimmage, football scrimmage within the company. And this fellow told me the story. He's pretty -- he's not big, but rugged, from Hawaii. And he and the other fellow, also from Hawaii. And see, they knew how good Kash was, so they used to gang together, football. And they would try to block him because he's so big and, so that was kind of a friendly rivalry between the, let's say, Hawaiian and mainland people.

TI: Yeah, because --

KO: It's amusing.

TI: I know the Seattle team, they used, I mean, Kash was kind of one of their stars, so that was important. So the Hawaiians would gang up on him?

KO: It's a friendly kind of a thing.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.