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TI: And I was looking at some pictures earlier and I saw, I think it was your brother in a kendo outfit. Did you do things like kendo or judo?

MY: All three brothers were in different kind of martial arts. My oldest brother was in sumo. My middle brother, Albert, was in kendo. I was in yawara. Yawara is the martial arts where... its origin was in Kagoshima, which is close to Okinawa, which means karate martial arts. Karate means empty hand fighting. So by the time evacuation came about I was in the yawara class for three or four years, so we were already practicing with knives and pistols, .38 special, trigger, hair trigger pistol, so I knew [inaudible] did and did not do.

TI: And so when you said these weapons, I mean, you were learning how to defend yourself against these weapons?

MY: Yes, primarily defending. Teacher says, "The first we want you to do if you get into a bind is run, and if you cannot run then you defend yourself as much as you can without doing anything. And then if and when they cannot do to you, do what I've taught you what to do."

TI: And you did this for about three or four years.

MY: I beg your pardon?

TI: You did this for three, four years?

MY: About three years, because I was turning eighteen in camp. That would've been eighteen, seventeen, sixteen, fifteen, about those years. I remember the first time I was in the martial arts class, for the first approximately six months, all we did was learn how to fall. You notice this slight hill? We used to have two Norwegian elkhounds here, and I would exercise the dogs out there throwing a tennis ball. I still remember one day I threw a tennis ball, and the dog would release it and the ball starts rolling. As you know, once a ball starts rolling down the hill it gains some momentum. And by the time it passed me it was going pretty fast, and I missed it and then I had to chase it down the hill. I'm running and I see myself falling, and I still remember this quite vividly, I could see myself falling, my hands scraping, my face scraping, and the last thing I was -- that was what I remember -- and the first thing I remember after getting the ball was I was getting up with not a scratch on me because I had gone into that yawara roll, martial arts roll where you don't hurt yourself. So after how many years, after fifty years I was still able to do that in an emergency situation, so six months of falling down can have some results fifty years later. [Laughs]

TI: So it just becomes automatic, I mean, when you do something for six months.

MY: It was automatically, after six months of it, it becomes automatic.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.