Densho Digital Archive - Jack Y. Kunitomi Interview I (denshovh-kyoshisuke-03-0011)

<Begin Segment 11>

MN: So what year did you graduate from high school?

JK: 1933.

MN: And then after that, is that when you started to work at the wholesale market, the Ninth Street Wholesale Market?

JK: Yes.

MN: And then while you were working at the wholesale market, you started to attend college?

JK: No. I started school first, City College. It was supposed to be two years, preparatory for UCLA, Berkeley, or any four-year college. Well, for us Nisei, most of us didn't see any future. You see people going to college, what for? You're working in the market like your brother working in the market, why? Why'd they go to school? That was the thought in both of our thinking. So, you know, discouragement. So lots of people decided to go to school, took a job with the city, with anybody else, grow crops in the farm. So they had lot of options where to go. I think lots of them went back to the farm.

MN: But what about you? What did you major in at City College?

JK: Yeah, I had ambition. I went into journalism. Why? I had visions of writing sports stories.

MN: Did you have experience in high school?

JK: High school we were the, I was the editor-in-chief with another fellow. We wrote a column, a gossip column making fun of friends. So I thought I had crossed the knowledge for paper boy. After going to journalism school at City College, hey, we never did this in school. So it was a big change. And I, first year, we had L.A. Times, L.A. Examiner, both evening papers. Then we had the Hearst papers, L.A. Herald Express, which was afternoon. So I went to see a future job. Did I get a run around. No, Japanese face in a Caucasian office? I got the, "Hurry up and leave." So I said, "Oh, forget it." So I changed my subject.

MN: Did you ever apply for a job with, like, the Rafu Shimpo?

JK: Oh, no.

MN: Why not?

JK: I'm not thinking of the Rafu. I could have done better. [Laughs]

MN: You wanted to break in to the mainstream newspaper?

JK: Yeah.

MN: So they did...

JK: No attention. Yeah, the time was not right. Because we heard stories of Oriental faces getting too familiar with Caucasian... we had a swimming pool on First and Vermont called... it was a public swimming pool. There were signs -- not signs, stories that Oriental faces were seeing familiar with Caucasian faces or something. We heard that from L.A. City College where we were going. So you hear stories like that, you believe it or call people a liar. But we didn't hear stories. That was the '30s.