<Begin Segment 4>

MN: I want to ask you to go back a little further now. You saw a lot of buildings in Little Tokyo being built, and you were joking around about how you helped build the old Union Church, what did you boys do when they were building the old Union Church?

JK: Well, in those days, construction workers left everything the way they quit. So there's no fence, it wasn't closed up like modern construction. So we were free to take the lumber, find some nails, straighten them out to make furniture, things like that. And I guess the workers didn't mind losing a few yards of lumber. But we had no trouble with the workers because everything was wide open. Union Church was built 1923 or '4, and because they started with an excavation of a gym, we had a field day because they were digging deeper into the ground. Yeah, we knew that we were going to have a gym, and then a kitchen alongside the gym. And because we had no sense of safety, we were digging in the dirt just like the men were, except we're digging with our hands and feet. Well, we didn't cause any cave-ins, and so we survived one of our first construction programs.

MN: And you never got in trouble?

JK: No. I guess they didn't do major damage.

MN: But you almost dug the whole tunnel all the way to San Pedro Street, right?

JK: Yeah, almost. We were digging from the back of that gym all the way almost to San Pedro Street.

MN: That's a long tunnel.

JK: Yes, it's long.

MN: You could have had a cave-in.

JK: Yeah, we could have had a cave-in easily. But I guess the dirt was untouched. We were lucky.

MN: And then after that you saw the San Pedro Firm Building go up.

JK: (San Pedro) Firm Building came next.

MN: And my understanding is that the flower growers financed that building.

JK: Oh, uh-huh.

MN: And then after that you saw the, is it Nishi Hongwanji getting built?

JK: Yes. Nishi built. Before, it was built closer to the river, bridge crossing the L.A. River. Then they moved to First and Central to build the new temple.

MN: Now, you mentioned the river, and you were describing to me the river. Today, we only know the river as all concrete. What was the river like when you were growing up?

JK: Well, it was a wide open river, winding, and because the river was flat around the First Street Bridge, it was many, many curves. Because it was a flat part of the river, I guess, and we didn't mind that because now we could sort of dam up the curves to make shallow diving areas. And because we had diving areas, we could practice our racing dives, what we used to call racing dives. But we had trouble because we had a gang on the east side, living on the east side of the river, who laid claim to the river on that side. So they had slings, the old fashioned slings, the biblical slings. But our older brothers had a slingshot and then later on, they had a BB gun called Benjamin BB gun, whose range was so much greater than a slingshot, that we easily took over the river, ownership of the river. So we had no trouble with that.

MN: Did anyone get injured in these fights?

JK: Oh, yes. We were hit many times by the slings.

MN: 'Cause you could lose an eye with a slingshot. But nobody got a serious injury.

JK: No major damage.

MN: Now these people, the kids you were fighting over the territory of the river, were they Japanese Americans from the east side?

JK: No. They were mostly Caucasian, because they were Russians who immigrated from their families to China, Japan, and finally America. And so we met them at Lincoln High School because Lincoln had a pretty good sized entry of Russians.

MN: So when you met these -- you know, after you boys grew up and you went to high school and you met them, was there still a rivalry, or was there peace?

JK: You're all friends now, because we're playing on the same football team, same basketball, same baseball teams. So forgot there was a rivalry at the river. But then the Russians disappeared. I guess they got assimilated into the high school, Roosevelt High School was open then.

MN: Because when you were growing up, Belmont High was not built yet, and you said Roosevelt was not built yet.

JK: They were just starting to build.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.