<Begin Segment 17>

SY: So what was, I know that there was a positive and a negative side to it, or would you characterize it that way? Were there positives, what were the positives and what were the negatives?

GN: Well, I think the negative part is getting into fights. Somebody will get hurt physically.

SY: Can you talk a little bit about those, 'cause I know some of 'em were pretty bad. Were there any that were very, that were life-threatening for you?

GN: No, no.

SY: Never. With people who had guns? No? You never felt that threatened by any other encounters.

GN: No, I think in those days the Latino gangs were different from the JA gangs in that respect.

SY: So the JA gangs were much more, not so violent, not so aggressive.

GN: Well, using the weapon. In general, did not use weapons.

SY: And did you have encounters, like, at restaurants, at, around town, or were they...

GN: We did. In fact, we, when one of the Constituents was, got out of the car at Hody's Restaurant to go to the restroom there was a group of white youth that was in a car, called him a "Jap," and so that started the fight. It turns out that they were SC football players, and then the word got out to the, to our African American friends and, oh, most of them came to Hody's and they were, the white football players were gone. But that period was when SC had maybe one or two African American football players. I remember that year they had this guy named, I think his name was Ben Johnson, the fullback at SC, but I think he was the only African American on that team.

SY: And word just sort of gets out when things like this happen.

GN: Oh yeah. But some of the good things we did, we hosted the dance to raise money for the Japanese orphanage, Shonien. And so, and typically whenever you have a dance they sell these, they call it bids, but it's sort of like a ticket to the event, and so they have one for the stagettes and one for stag, and that's how they usually differentiate between male and female.

SY: And you had to pay to get into these dances?

GN: Yeah, it's like twenty-five cents. So we raised, how much did we raise? Hundred and seventy-five dollars, I think. And most of us were in the eleventh grade at that time, and we donated that money to Shonien and so we got our picture in the Crossroad newspaper.

SY: And where were your parents during all this? Were you pretty much on your own?

GN: We're on our own.

SY: All the kids at that point, parents were not, there wasn't this "you shouldn't be doing this."

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.