<Begin Segment 13>

MN: So the last junior high school you graduated from was Hollenbeck junior high.

TN: That's the only one I graduated from.

MN: [Laughs] Which high school did you go after that?

TN: Roosevelt High School.

MN: So Roosevelt High School, what was the ethnic makeup of the student body?

TN: I don't know. About maybe sixty percent Latino at least, maybe more. Maybe two-thirds or maybe more. But for my graduating class, I counted it, looks like it was about almost twenty percent Asians, mostly Japanese, and about maybe fifteen, sixteen percent whites. I don't know how much was black, maybe five percent, and the rest were Latinos, mostly Mexicans, Mexican Americans rather.

MN: So by the time you got into high school, Roosevelt, I guess, a lot of the Latino population were moving into the area, it sounds like.

TN: Well, they were already there, but more were coming in and the whites were moving out. The whites were a majority Jewish and also a lot of Russians, ethnic Russians, and a few others, Anglo Saxons or Italians, Greeks, whatever, French. One French guy, anyway.

MN: So at Roosevelt, how did you do academically?

TN: Okay. B-plus average or something like that.

MN: Were you involved in any sports activities?

TN: I tried out for football once, that's about it.

MN: Did you make the team?

TN: I'm not sure what I was. Not quite on the team, but practiced or something, play in the practice games. I was a skinny little kid.

MN: Did you do judo or anything like that?

TN: No.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.