<Begin Segment 19>

MN: Mits, I'm going to take you back to Santa Anita.

MY: Yeah.

MN: Did you work in Santa Anita?

MY: Yeah, I signed up as a policeman. I was only eighteen years old but I guess I was pretty big for a Japanese, so one of my friends says, "Hey, let's sign up for the police department." He was about three four years older than I was so we went, signed up, and we used to walk patrol and stuff. I used to walk with this one fellow Shig Chikami, and when they had this sort of a mini riot in Santa Anita, they fired all the policemen. So then we all... I don't know if you ever heard of the Exclusive 20 that used to be sort of like a, I guess yogore type gang or something. But anyway, most of them were in the police department and this Shig was part of that group, so we all signed up as dishwashers in one of the mess halls. So we went to work in the red mess in Santa Anita. But it was sort of fun working with all those guys. I mean, they may have had a bad rep but they were all really nice to me.

MN: How did you get friendly with the Exclusive 20s? Because they were pretty cliquish and they were --

MY: Well, see this Shig knew quite a few of the members there, I guess. He was real close with most of them. So then I guess he introduced me to a lot of them and that's how I got to know them, and I never really what you call associated. I mean, I never was really that friendly with them but they accepted me as just another person. And so we used to work together in the red mess but I remember people treated them with respect. [Laughs]

MN: And I know a lot of the Exclusive 20 boys used to lift weights at Santa Anita. Did you do that also?

MY: No, I didn't. At that time I wasn't interested in that.

MN: So when the riots broke out, where were you?

MY: Gee, I don't remember. I don't know, I forget. I didn't even hardly know that there was a riot myself.

MN: Why did they fire the police department?

MY: I don't know, but I know they got rid of all the police department. They figured police department didn't do any good in the riot so I know they fired all the police department. So we all went to work in the red mess.

MN: Did you get into any fights?

MY: No, never.

[Interruption]

MN: Talking about how you got fired from the police department in Santa Anita, so other than that experience, what did you do on your free time at Santa Anita?

MY: I got to be friends with this Shig Shiroishi. He was a weightlifter; he used to lift weights. I mean, he weighed about 135, 140 pounds, but boy, he was strong. I used to do a little bit of weightlifting with him there. Then when we went to Rohwer he got into Rohwer, too. And I became real interested in lifting weights with him so I did a lot of that in Rohwer. I didn't do that much in Santa Anita.

MN: Did you do any work at the camouflage net?

MY: No, we used to go visit every day. One of my friends had a girl that he met from San Jose that he liked and we used to go visit every day. And I'm sure they would eventually got married, but I know every day we used to go there. "Come on, Mits, let's go," and we'd go up there and go visit 'em at the camouflage nets. So this girl had a girlfriend they figured that I would eventually end up with her, but I wasn't just interested in girls. I didn't want to get tied up with any girls at that time, so we went to Rohwer and his girlfriend went to Heart Mountain, Wyoming. Well, I know he used to write her... she used to write him a letter every day and I'd go up to his... he lived in a different block than me. He lived in Block 4, I lived in 16, so I'd walk up to his place every day and he's in a room there writing a letter, pretty soon he'd crumble it up and he'd throw it away, but he never wrote her a letter. He just thought that the letters he was writing was no good so he'd crumbled it up, had a wastebasket full of paper. So they eventually split up but I'm sure if they would've continued, they probably would've got married, but he never wrote her a letter. I know every day I used to go there. [Laughs] It was funny, so I would go see him and him and his brothers lived in one room, his sister and the folks lived in the next room. So then I'd go see him and he's writing and I'd say, "That's okay, you just keep writing. I'll go visit your folks." So at first his folks used to think, "Man, how can my sons go around with this kind of a yogore?" I guess that can't speak any Japanese. But I got to know them and they really treated me good. They treated me like their own son and when I was in the army I'd go visit and I'd stay with them. They really treated me good.

MN: Did you dress up in a zoot suit kind of style? Did you dress up in a zoot suit?

MY: No, I just had regular clothes. [Laughs] I was never one of them, really, so to speak. It's just that because I was in the police department and because the fellow that I used to walk the beat with knew... I guess he was maybe one of the members of the... but he knew all of them. He was good friends with like Bud Mukai and Kuma and Yami. So I got to know them, but to me they were not zoot suit yogores. I mean, they were just regular people because they treated me like a regular person. I don't know, before the war, they may have been sort of a different group or an obnoxious group, but when I knew them they were just treated like regular people.

MN: Did you go to any of the dances at Santa Anita?

MY: Not really. I never went. I know my dad, well, see, he was only... when we went to Santa Anita he was only forty-two so he used to go dancing, he loved dancing. But I never learned how to dance 'til later, and I didn't know any girls anyway, but the only ones I knew were like Toshi's two older sisters. But at that time we never danced or anything.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.