<Begin Segment 15>

SY: So after Hollenbeck you went, ended up at...

GN: Roosevelt.

SY: Roosevelt, in the area, in Boyle Heights.

GN: And I was there for a year and a half. But our family was really poor in those days and so I had to find a part time job, but I couldn't find any in Boyle Heights. You have high density population, lot of other kids are looking for jobs, and I just couldn't find one. Then finally my uncle, who was an auto mechanic and was working out of a garage near Shrine Auditorium, was able to find a job for me, and it was at a shop that specializes in rebuilding carburetor, fuel pump, and distributors. And so anyway, he told me that he talked to the owner of that shop and they were willing to hire somebody part time, so I was able to get a job there. But getting to that job on the streetcar was taking, like, anywhere from thirty to forty minutes after school, and so that's when I transferred high school from Roosevelt to L.A. Polytechnic, so that's where I graduated from.

SY: So that was an easy thing to do at that time.

GN: Yeah, it's like less than ten minutes from my school to get to my job.

SY: But you, you had no trouble transferring to another?

GN: No, I did. I remember my first time that the principal spoke to the students at Roosevelt he says, "Anybody who wants to transfer out of this school just come and see me and I'll be happy to transfer you out." And so I took that literally and so when I did go see him about going to L.A. Poly and my reason was job. He wouldn't let me. Well, the contradiction is if they want a certain athlete to attend to their, attend Roosevelt so they could have this super athlete attend Roosevelt, they'll do it by way of a job. They'll find a job for that person and that would allow them to get a transfer.

SY: I see.

GN: And so it's a flat out lie, and so I used my cousin's address that lived in the L.A. Poly area to go to L.A. Poly.

SY: I see, so in other words it was very subjective whether you got transferred or not, and he decided not to transfer you because you, he...

GN: Well I don't know what his reasons were, but he wouldn't do it.

SY: Right, right, but you were not given an option. Yeah, okay. That's interesting.

GN: And it was a necessity for me because it was to earn money for the family.

SY: Right. And that was your choice. You really wanted to go to Poly even though you were a student at Roosevelt. And then, so eventually you ended up there, and talk a little bit about what Poly, about Poly High School back then.

GN: It was a very multiethnic high school. It was like one-fourth white, one-fourth Asian, one-fourth Latino, and one-fourth African American.

SY: That's really balanced.

GN: Oh yeah, and in fact, so I had belonged to a Japanese American club in, when I was at Roosevelt, a club called Squires, and still some of those people I know to this day. And then when I went to L.A. Poly I joined the Constituents, so that was a club about my age group and that club had two African Americans, we had some hapas, half Filipino and half Chinese, in the group. We had also a Chinese in our group. Mostly JAs.

SY: Mostly JAs.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.