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SY: So when you were then, you were from junior high school, then you ended up going to high school. And this is all still before the war.

FO: Yes.

SY: And what high school did you go to?

FO: I went to L.A. High.

SY: L.A. High, which is still there, right?

FO: Still there, yeah. My dad says that he graduated from L.A. High when it was in downtown L.A.

SY: Wow. So he went to school here when he first came.

FO: Yeah, evidently.

SY: So L.A. High originally was in downtown, and then it moved?

FO: And it moved to the present location.

SY: I see. So now when you were in high school, did you hang around with mainly kids from St. Mary's?

FO: Well, we hung around with kids from your own neighborhood, and then if you went into sports, you got to know all these athletes and stuff.

SY: So you were a pretty big athlete?

FO: No, I'm not a big athlete. Maybe I'm tall. But I used to go out for baseball.

SY: You liked sports then, huh?

FO: Yeah.

SY: And, I mean, do you remember experiencing any prejudice when you were in high school or junior high school?

FO: No, I didn't experience any kind of prejudice. We didn't know what prejudice meant. But in junior high school, we played softball, and we had noontime leagues. And we had to, if you're the captain of the team, you had to go around signing people up on a contract, then we formed teams that way. And the gym coach, Mr. Trotter, used to be a coach at UCLA gym team... no, track team, so he wanted us to learn about contracts and things. So we had the big league and the peanut league. The big league was the older fellows, and the peanut was the younger fellows, and those are aren't experienced with baseball as much. But everybody you signed up had a contract. So if you didn't do well in the big leagues, then you were gonna be sent down to the minor leagues, so to speak. You know, that contract went with you. And the captain, that team, had to sign that contract to accept you, so we knew something about contracts.

SY: The way sports works. That's very interesting. So that was thanks to this coach that was there at the school.

FO: Yeah.

SY: That's interesting.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.