<Begin Segment 14>

TI: But before we move on, during the break you mentioned a couple other stories that I want to go back and catch. One was going back to Hollywood, so before the war, you were going to talk about your uncle, and so tell me about your uncle.

RY: My uncle was a very studious kid and he was... well, the junior high school by the house where he went, he was the class president as a matter of fact, first Japanese American to be class president. It was Le Conte Junior High and he wanted to be a doctor. So he went to Hollywood High and he became the valedictorian of the class when he graduated and he was looking forward to getting the American Legion Scholarship Award that usually goes to the valedictorian. Well, I guess the racial prejudice was pretty high at that time and so they awarded it to a Caucasian kid who was not the valedictorian and so my uncle didn't get the scholarship. And so his dream about becoming a doctor just went down the tubes because he couldn't afford to... he wanted to go to UCLA and he couldn't afford it. So in the long run, to make a long story short, he became a dentist which he could do without going through all of the medical school and all that. So I thought I'd just mention that because my mom was really disappointed at that time because she said he didn't get it and the Caucasian boy got it and I thought that was very unfair to him, being the valedictorian of Hollywood High.

TI: Now was your uncle bitter about this? Did you ever get a sense that because of that he became bitter?

RY: I think he was a little bitter about that.

TI: Did the teachers or anything acknowledge him in a different way? I mean, they must have all seen that too. They know kind of that the valedictorian always got the scholarship and then he didn't get it.

RY: I don't really know about that because all I know is my mom was really angry and disappointed that he didn't get it. And I didn't go to the Hollywood High so I don't really know.

TI: And this was your mother's brother?

RY: Yeah, my mother's youngest brother.

TI: And what was his name? Do you remember?

RY: His name was Kenji Horita.

TI: Okay, and so Kenji, he was Issei?

RY: He was Nisei.

TI: He was Nisei?

RY: Yeah.

TI: Okay.

RY: He was the reason why we went to Manzanar because when the relocation came about, they had different sectors for different camps. And actually we were in the sector that was scheduled to go to Heart Mountain, Wyoming, and he lived in the sector that was scheduled to go to Manzanar. But in order to go to Heart Mountain, we would've had to have gone to Santa Anita Assembly Center first. And my parents, they were pretty smart, they said, "Well we don't want to do this twice," so instead of going to the assembly center and then going to Heart Mountain, we just go straight to Manzanar. We had a choice either go Heart Mountain or go with my uncle to Manzanar so we went to Manzanar.

TI: That's interesting so and the reason being they just didn't want to do it twice.

RY: Yeah, and I'm glad we didn't go to the Santa Anita 'cause I wouldn't want to live in the stables, you know.

TI: The other story you told off camera that I thought was interesting, you were just telling me about at Manzanar, the orchards between like the firebreaks and things were orchards?

RY: Some of the firebreaks had orchards because it was like apple orchards and pear orchards. And so a lot of times on the way to school when the pears got fairly ripe, they were hard green pears, good chewing, and we would climb the trees, stuff our pockets full of pears and be eating pears on the way to school.

TI: So was that kind of a mischievous thing to do? You weren't supposed to do that?

RY: No, the pears were there for the picking, nobody was... we just happened to live next to a pear orchard.

TI: Now did you ever try the pears when they were like tree ripened? Versus you said you ate them when they're kind of green.

RY: I never tried ripe pears but the green ones were pretty good.

TI: Were they? Okay, good.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.