<Begin Segment 11>

SY: So now, I hate to get back to this, but I'm kind of curious how, you were the kind of kid that got into fights, and I'm just wondering where that came from.

GN: I don't know. I, I don't like to be intimidated and I tend to become defiant. But I saw that in my daughter too that way as she was growing up.

SY: You never felt, and you weren't that big either, right?

GN: No.

SY: And so were you intimidated by bigger guys?

GN: Sometimes. But I found that you get into a fight and if you get a couple of good punches in there, even though maybe you're not gonna win the fight that's enough for them to leave you alone. It's not worth it.

SY: That's amazing. And you never felt, well, like you said, you don't like to be intimidated, but you never felt intimidated by guys who were bigger than you?

GN: Sometimes they would come and try to pick a fight, but sometimes you just kind of let it go 'cause it's, sometimes they're trying to fool around and so you have to be able to make those kind of decisions.

SY: So do you remember what prompted some of these fights?

GN: No, they would call you names. There'll be some kind of incident and then they call you names.

SY: It wasn't, was it a racist name?

GN: Oh yeah, when they call you "Jap," that was fighting word for me.

SY: So anytime anybody called you...

GN: Yeah.

SY: Wow. And I'm, how many times...

GN: There was this big fight that I had that I wrote in my memoir that, he didn't, that one he didn't call me any names.

SY: So tell us about that fight.

GN: Well, when we were living on the Norwalk flower farm, the bus would pick us up to go to school, and at that time I was attending Centennial Intermediate School, seventh grade. And every morning I would go to the P.E. locker room and get in line to check out a basketball, so that was my daily ritual. And so this one morning this bigger guy comes up from behind me and pushes me out of line, and I mean, I look at his size and I didn't want to fight him, so I just stayed back and if he wanted to cut in I'm gonna let him cut in. And then he goes and shoves me some more, and so I keep backing away, keeps shoving me, then finally he decided that he's gonna punch me and I ducked and he missed. And I thought about taking off because I figure I could outrun him. We just recently had a citywide track meet that Kiwanis Club had sponsored and I took first place among the seventh graders in the fifty-yard dash. But then I also thought that, gee, if I run now he's gonna catch me, catch up to me anyway and I'm gonna look like a coward, so that's not a good choice. So then when he took a swing at me again, he missed, this time I bopped him in the eye. And he got real mad, he came after me again, swung and he missed, and I hit him in the eye again, and then now he stopped, so now I became the aggressor. So I would fake a punch and I would hit him in the eye, and I don't know, but I just, that's all I aimed for. And probably got at least about a dozen punches in, and then I got overconfident and, 'cause I was initially would hit him once and back away about half a step so he can't grab me 'cause he's big, and I forgot about that and I would try to punch him twice in a row, two in a row, and he grabbed me and got me in a bear hug, and I said, oh god. Anyway, and then the bell rang and so I was saved by the bell. The older, older kids said, break it up, school's started.

SY: So you were surrounded by kids when this was going on.

GN: The entire school campus was surrounding us, and he didn't come to school for a whole week. And his sister was in my class, and the sister got mad at me for beating him up and I said, "Look, I didn't even want to fight. He's the one that started it and I had to defend myself." But anyway, finally when he came back to school he had two black eyes.

SY: And you didn't have any.

GN: No, 'cause he didn't land a single punch on me. I avoided that.

SY: Wow. And no official, school official...

GN: No one came to break it up. And I was hoping that hakujin guy that lived across the street from me, 'cause he was tall, I said, gee, where is he? I wish he would come and break this up, but he was nowhere around. I think he came later when the crowd started gathering.

SY: So did you, well, and did you then get some sort of reputation after this? Or did kids sort of know you as a fighter?

GN: No, they didn't. 'Cause I didn't go around looking for fights.

SY: So you were always defending yourself. That was the reason that you would, you never picked a fight.

GN: No, no. I never went around picking a fight.

SY: And then what happened to this guy?

GN: Well, because he was gone for a whole week and he had two black eyes, his homeroom teacher sent him to VP office and then I got called into the VP office, and I explained that I got shoved out of line from him and then he start swinging at me and then had to defend myself, so the outcome was that he got beat up. And so the VP said for him to apologize to me and we shook hands, and he was the nicest person after that, and reason being that he was totally humiliated in front of the entire student body and that changed him. He was no longer a bully after that.

SY: Wow. And did you learn a lesson from this in terms of if people pick on you?

GN: Yeah, in that not to get intimidated.

SY: And your parents, did they have anything to say about it, or did they even know?

GN: They didn't even know about it.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.