<Begin Segment 5>

TI: But going back to your regular school, so what was the kind of makeup with Japanese and Caucasian? I mean, was it pretty even?

RY: Oh, no there were more Caucasians than Japanese but there were a few Japanese because at that time they were quite a few Japanese living in Hollywood. One thing I remember is we had a lot of Jewish people, a lot of Jewish people lived in Hollywood and when they had Jewish holidays we got the day off because there wasn't anybody in school.

TI: Oh, interesting. So you got both the regular the Christian holidays and the Jewish holidays?

RY: Yeah and so I always used to ask my friends, "When's your next holiday?" [Laughs] And the synagogue was right next across the street from the school so we used to go and sit there and watch them going in to church.

TI: Now why was there such a large Jewish population there?

RY: I'm not sure. I think, well, Hollywood had a lot of Jewish people, I don't know why.

TI: So back then, were there families that worked in the film industry or entertainment industry?

RY: Well, of course the Japanese were all mostly gardeners. I don't remember what the Caucasian families did. There was quite a mixture of races living on my street is all I can think of. And we had Chinese, Caucasians.

TI: And so which high school would you have gone to?

RY: I would've... if I would have been there I would have gone to Hollywood High.

TI: Okay.

RY: Yeah.

TI: And so with your friends, what are some typical things you would do to play? I mean, what are some activities?

RY: Well, used to play football in the street and in the evenings we'd play kick the can. That was fun and then I met this one Caucasian kid and he was into model making and I got together with him and he was teaching me how to make model airplanes with gas model, gas powered model airplanes and we'd take it out and he'd fly them, you know. And I got pretty close to that family.

TI: Now in those days, were they attached with a string and they would go in a circle?

RY: No, it was free flight balsa wood planes.

TI: So you would just sort of... they would take off?

RY: Yeah, it would take off and then they had timers on it so the engine would go so far and then it would stop and then it would glide around.

TI: Oh, I see. So the engine would take it up high enough and then you would set it in a way that it would kind of go more in circles so that it wouldn't --

RY: Sometimes it would catch a thermal and we'd have to jump in the car and chase it. So that was quite a family.

TI: Interesting, so it sounds like you were pretty close to this family?

RY: Yeah, the family really took good care of me. As a matter of fact I was with them flying model airplanes the day of Pearl Harbor.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.