<Begin Segment 8>

TI: So we're gonna start the second part.

BS: This is Maryknoll.

TI: Yeah. Okay, Maryknoll.

BS: We're still at Maryknoll and I think it was before the war and stuff, we would, Maryknoll had these picnics at Lincoln Park, every year Lincoln Park, the big picnic. And I remember we'd have these cone fights. Remember that? They'd tie an ice cream cone, without the ice cream, the cone, put holes on the side and they'd tie it on your head, and they'd give you a newspaper wrapped up and the thing was to knock off the cone from your opponent's head. And they'd say, okay, one, two, three, four, all that, and then all the even side and the odd sides are decided and then we'd attack each other. And I'd be the one that was attacked first for some reason, and I found out later it was because I was a mouthy guy. You know, "You ain't gonna get me," and all this kind of stuff. And so I was, I probably had my cone knocked off the first one of anybody in our age group, and I think they had two or three classes in the same group, kindergarten, first grade, second, and then every year that we had this thing I'd be out there for two seconds and my cone'd be knocked off. So I told these guys, "When I grow up I'm gonna get you guys." There's still time to get even, even today. When they come down to the Bush Garden I'm gonna knock off their cone.

TI: [Laughs] The funny thing is every two years we have a family reunion and we play that same game.

BS: Is that right?

TI: The cone game, yeah. We put it on there. I'm curious, because my mom was Maryknoll, I wonder if she got it from there?

BS: Yeah, must have. Yeah, I love that game.

TI: Okay. Earlier you were talking about how, so after December 7, 1941, and there was tensions between the Philippines and Japan.

BS: Yes.

TI: The Sixteenth Avenue group still stayed tight.

BS: They stayed, they stayed pretty tight. In fact, all our families, when the buses were lined up for the families to board on their way to Puyallup, all our families, all the Filipino families were there to say goodbye with whatever we, I don't know, pastries or whatever, we gave our neighbors as they boarded their buses, so I remember that. I wish there were photos of that, but I haven't been able to find them.

TI: Yeah, that would've been a great photo to see. What happened to all the houses, the Japanese houses on Sixteenth Avenue? What happened to them?

BS: They were rented out. There was, the Matsudaira house was -- and I don't know who actually owned it. I think the Matsudairas still owned it, and someone took it over and rented it to another large family. The Bozarth family moved into that house, and they were all blondes. Those kids were all blondes and they all went to Immaculate, so I remember there was so much of a difference into the white kids came into that Sixteenth Avenue neighborhood. 'Cause that was still the street that we hung out at and during the war, when the school was closed, the Maryknoll missionaries kept the building and it became more like a community center for the Filipino community.

TI: Because this is, okay, so the war started, the Japanese leave, and so the school was like ninety-eight percent Japanese --

BS: So the school was closed.

TI: Yeah, so before we talk about what happened to the building, what happened to you and your cousin, and where did you guys go?

BS: We went up two blocks north to Immaculate. So second grade, in the second grade, I was in the second, first grade, second grade we go up there to Immaculate, and there's this, I remember this little kid named Nelson kept coming after me. Nelson, he must've been -- I'm in the first or second grade, I think it was second grade -- and he must be a sixth grader, seventh grader, and he'd lift me up and put me up against the wall, and he said, "You're a Jap, you're a Jap, you're a Jap." And he'd start slappin' me. He didn't hit me. He'd slap me, and I'd be cryin' and all that kind of stuff. And this was during the war now, and as soon as we moved up there I remember walking from Immaculate down Jefferson to Fourteenth to the apartment, and there was a black kid that wouldn't let me pass 'cause I was a little, he called me a little "Jap." And his name was, and he's still around, maybe he... oh, I forget his name. Reggie Fry, him and his little brother would never let me pass, right? The Asian kids, we had to wear buttons later on said "I'm Filipino," or Philippines or some red, white and blue button. Chinese kids had the same problem. All Asian kids were enemies, right, to other little kids, and we even had a hard time jumping on a bus to go downtown to a movie. People would complain, so the bus driver would stop and say, you kids got to leave.

TI: Now, this was happening even after all the Japanese had left Seattle?

BS: Yes.

TI: And so I'm curious, I mean, why did they, why would they call you a "Jap" when all the Japanese were gone?

BS: Because people really didn't, don't know the difference that time. You're talking about lot of probably older white folk, maybe Italian, ethnic Italians or, in Tacoma my brother had the same problem growing up during those war years with the Slovak community. They would cuss, come out the door and cuss at little Asian kids. So that's, so after a year of that, maybe eight months or so, we had to wear these buttons. Not that we were proud to be Filipinos, we just didn't want to be mixed up as Japanese kids.

TI: But wasn't it, so this is interesting, so wasn't it really well publicized that the Japanese had been removed from Seattle and Tacoma and places like that, that there were no more Japanese on the West Coast? I mean, didn't people understand that and know that?

BS: I think people understood that, but there was still that, I don't know, it's a racial thing. I mean, I think we sort of prove that this was a racial issue.

TI: It is interesting because, ironically, Japan was fighting against the Philippines and China. I mean, if anything the Filipinos and the Chinese were with the Allies.

BS: Exactly. Right, but in neighborhoods when people looked out their window or were riding a bus and an Asian kid came on that didn't have that button, boom, just like, just like today when a kid, a Middle East kid, all of a sudden you put your guard up. You don't know if that kid is a Muslim or what. It could be Indian, it could be Pakistani, but everything's lumped into, he's an Arab, you know what I mean? That, that...

TI: That's a good analogy, because, yeah, the Sikh community, for instance.

BS: Yeah.

TI: Even though they're not Muslim they were attacked after 9/11.

BS: That's right. The Sikh community, everybody think they're, the other people think they're Indian and they're not. So people just sort of categorize a people of color in one, Asian, Oriental, into one grouping, and so you must be the enemy, you know? It's just, growing up we had, we knew there was discrimination. That's how we found out about discrimination. Not that our neighbors and our schoolmates were sent away, but we also had to bear some of that animosity on ourselves. I had to go two blocks around to get to my home because Reggie Fry and his brother were gonna beat me up. Well, I sort of kept up with Reggie Fry, used to hang out at the Four Seas, so I said, "Reggie, you have one more drink I'll kick your ass when you get out in the parking lot." We laugh 'cause he remembered that story. Sorry.

TI: And so, in terms of discrimination like that, was it distinctly a lot more once the war started? I mean, before the war, did you face the same kind of taunts, or did it really start when the war started?

BS: Yeah, it was when the war started. And some of us, we sort of hung together. We had our little sports teams, basketball teams, baseball teams, and the Filipino kids, we had an organization called Filipino Youth -- not the FYA, it was Filipino Catholic Youth. We're all, so we had our little teams, and then when we played in other playfields, if we played a basketball game, we were taunted. We were taunted. Not as Filipinos, but as, you know, "you guys" or, I don't think they called us "Japs" then, but it was that feeling that we were all them. We were all them. We were always taunted and it always made us kind of think about, what, they know who we are? But it was, it was never, it was a racial thing. We knew that. But it wasn't, like, specific. That's why our comfort zone was always in the International District, the Chinatown/International District area where we all went, hung out there during the war years when we were little kids, 'cause that was a comfort zone. We didn't get attacked by, by other kids. Chinese were goin' through that same era, same period of time, they were having their problems.

TI: Interesting.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.