<Begin Segment 1>

TI: Okay, so Bob, I start with just the date and where we are, who else is in the room, so today's June 2, 2011. On camera is Dana Hoshide, observing is Casey Ikeda, and I'm the interviewer, Tom Ikeda, and today we're with Bob Santos. And so Bob, I'm just gonna start, why don't you first just tell me when and where you were born?

BS: I was born in Seattle, Harborview Hospital, to my parents, Sammy and Virginia Santos.

TI: So let's first talk about your father.

BS: Okay.

TI: So why don't you tell me, so Sammy Santos, and tell me where he was born and how he came to the United States?

BS: Okay. Now it's gonna be a little long 'cause there's a little story to tell.

TI: Yeah. No, tell. Please, tell me the story.

BS: So Macario Santos was born at the turn of the century, and he was born in the Philippines in an area called Jose Rizal Province, which is metropolitan Manila. He was a pretty restless guy, and when he was seventeen he ran away from home and he joined the U.S. Navy. So as a seaman and on his way to San Diego, he got into an altercation with a junior officer, a naval officer, and he actually got in a fight and I guess he beat the guy up. When they came into San Diego he jumped ship before they could bring him to the brig, or to the military jail.

TI: Okay, so make sure I understand, so because of that kind of fight with the officer he was gonna be thrown in the brig probably, and so as they're in, they've docked...

BS: They're coming in, yeah.

TI: He just jumps ship, literally jumps ship?

BS: Yeah, when they got near, or when they were docking in San Diego, for some reason he got away and he jumped ship. That's what I hear. I don't know how long, and he never told me how long he was in the brig, but it must've been a year or two years, and when he got out he didn't have any skills.

TI: Okay, so making sure, so he jumped ship and then they caught him?

BS: No, not yet.

TI: Okay, so how, but he was in the brig, though?

BS: No, he was in the brig on the ship.

TI: On the ship, okay.

BS: But once, for some reason he broke loose and he got away. He always says, "I jumped ship. I jumped the ship." So he didn't have any skills, but he did like to fight. He was a scrapper, so he started hangin' out at the gym, at the boxing gyms in San Pedro, and he became pretty good. The promoters would put him into preliminary fights. There'd be a main event and then two or three preliminary fights, four, four, five, six rounders. And he would beat all his opponents in the preliminary fights.

TI: So I'm curious, when you say San Pedro, this is down in Los Angeles, in that area right --

BS: This is in San Pedro, as it were.

TI: So there was a large Japanese community down there. Did he fight against Japanese? Was that part of...

BS: I don't, I don't know that. I know he, in his old clippings, most of the names were American, white fighters, maybe black fighters. I didn't see any Asian fighters. But he got to be pretty good and he became a main eventer. He worked his way up to eight rounds and ten round, ten round matches. And he fought under the name of Sammy Santos. When he jumped ship he had changed his name, so he just changed his first name to Sammy Santos. And at that time, of course, there's a lot of boxers, a lot of prize fighters who were Filipino. Some Japanese, some Chinese, not very many, but a lot of Filipinos. Pound for pound, they could match up with anybody, and so they became, there was quite a circle of boxers, of prize fighters who came from the Philippines, and my dad was one of them. And there was a couple of champions at that same era, a guy named Speedy Dado and a guy named Marino. They were both champions in their divisions, and I forgot, lighter, the lighter divisions. So Sammy starts winning these fights and then he starts to get publicized, and then the navy says, hey, I think that's the guy we're lookin' for. That's Macario. So my dad got picked up at, he says he was fighting a match, he says, "I was winning," and the shore patrol waited until he, the fight ended and he won the fight, and then they grabbed him and they put him in the brig in San Diego. Dad would never say how long he was in that brig, or that jail, but when he got out, of course, he resumed his boxing career. And there were a lot of Filipinos, a lot of boxers in his weight in this southern California area, so he started --

TI: Backing up just a little bit, I'm curious, so when someone, like, jumps ship and it's kind of a military, you're in the military and they do this, is this on their record? Like in the same way a felony conviction would be in terms of civil and so that it's hard to get jobs or it's part of your record that you have to always report? Is that part of what he had to do?

BS: Yes. Yeah. That would be part. I guess he'd be a felon in today's... and I don't know what the charges and the disposition of his trial if he had one, so we don't know that.

TI: Okay. So anyway, so going on, so he's at the brig, he's...

BS: So he started, the promoters started matching him up with the better fighters in other cities around California, and he also made a trip to the Midwest, and he fought in Chicago and he fought in Cleveland, and then he ended up in Seattle. We find a trail of his old clippings, which are lost now. We lost 'em through the years, but his clippings showed southern California and then San Francisco, and then there was a match in Chicago and one in Cleveland, and the next batch of articles were from Seattle, Spokane and Seattle.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.