<Begin Segment 16>

TI: So let's go back to your life, and now after the war you're getting into, I guess, junior high school?

BS: Yeah. It, we're at Immaculate then. The, we're becoming teenagers then, and the middle of our social life was all at the Maryknoll mission church, and it was acquired by the archdiocese and they renamed it St. Peter Claver Center. So we had our, we changed from the Filipino Youth Organization to the FYA or some Filipino group, teenage club, and we had our basketball team and we joined the league at the Buddhist temple. The Chinese Clippers, Lotus, Yosh Nakagawa and all those guys, Frank Fujii, the old Chinese basketball players, Art... Mar? What was his name?

TI: Yeah, I know who you're talking about.

BS: Al Mar.

TI: Right. Was this associated with the Collins Playfield or was this a separate...

BS: We all, we all practiced at Collins, but the league was at the old Buddhist church. And we could never use that during the war because that was a Coast Guard military establishment. And I remember before the war we'd hang out with the kids there because they had the gymnasium there, and after the war that became the hot spot. All the teams played in the league, so the Japanese teams, a couple Chinese teams, and one Filipino team, was us. That was the, sort of the center of our world, was the athletic teams that were established, baseball teams and basketball teams. Not really football teams, we played football games, but not in organized leagues. And then at school most of the Japanese kids, when they returned, also went to Immaculate. They followed us to Immaculate 'cause that was the neighborhood Catholic school, parochial school.

TI: Now do you, by any chance, recall the first Japanese to return to Immaculate?

BS: All I remember, Pauline coming into my, the classroom. I didn't care about anybody else.

TI: [Laughs] Okay. 'Cause my mother's family, Kinoshita, they were the first family to come back to Immaculate, and --

BS: Was Chuck, Chuck was your uncle?

TI: Chuck, yeah. That's my mom's brother, Chuck.

BS: Okay. So you see him every other day at the baseball games, right, front row.

TI: Yeah, so my mom recalls the, actually, I think the, either the P-I or the Times kind of followed the family from Minidoka all the way back to Seattle and it was all documented, going to Immaculate, where she went. And Chuck, I think, went to O'Dea.

BS: He was a football player, but I forgot when that was, right after the war.

TI: Yeah, right after the war.

BS: He was a big, he was a big hero. He was a big football hero at that time. And later on was Charlie Chihara, became a scatback, what they called him then.

TI: What's intriguing to me is I look back at some of the pictures after the war, and you would see a lot of mixing of races. You'd see teams with African Americans, Japanese, Chinese, whites, all playing football together and different sports.

BS: Yeah. And that was, that was unique about Seattle. Even after the kids came back from camp and we started our basketball teams, our teams weren't necessarily mixed yet. We kept our Filipino teams, and then George Cassi, who's half Japanese, he had to go to camp, he came out early, but he was on our team. So we had a couple kids like that, but we had the Filipino team, couple Chinese teams, and all Japanese teams, but we played in the same league and we all went to the same dances. In fact, our Filipino league -- I'm probably skipping ahead a little bit, but our Filipino league, our team sponsored a dance at the Buddhist auditorium, the gymnasium, and

Quincy Jones was playing.

TI: That's a good story.

BS: He was playing trumpet for a guy named Bumps Blackwell. Bumps Blackwell was an orchestra leader at that time, and he played for all our dances.

TI: See, I'd love to get pictures of that, Quincy Jones playing at the Buddhist gymnasium.

BS: I looked everywhere and I couldn't find it. I have a photo of the Filipino queen and in the background, on the orchestra, is Bumps Blackwell, but it was, it was at an intermission, when the queen was crowned, so Quincy and the players were on the side or, on the side or outside havin' a smoke, whatever they did then. But I never could, and we have to look, and there was a Filipino photographer that documented everything. His name was Wally Almanzor, and if I could ever get his son to show me some of the photos in that era I might be able to find something.

TI: Okay. So Bob, I think we're gonna take a break here.

BS: Okay.

TI: For the day, and just end here.

BS: For the day.

TI: And then we're gonna pick up tomorrow, so this was, this was good because we're just getting to a point where you're starting some other things, and I wanted to do that.

BS: That's good. Yeah.

TI: So fabulous. Wow, this was fun.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.