<Begin Segment 26>

MN: And then you did very well at Stevenson Junior High School. You even made it into the scholarship group.

YK: Yeah. And so, but I had this sourpuss teacher who taught for two (close) sessions, English and social studies. She had really insulted me once, especially when it was getting towards the end of the school year and she was asking all those with a birthday in May when I stood up. She asked how old I was, I said I was sixteen, she said, "Oh, you're a grandpa." So I kind of hated her. So when it came that we were supposed to (go to) the scholarship dinner, I figured my mother wouldn't go, and so I said, "No, I'm not going." But she sent me to Mr... what was his name? Wilson, I think, or Stevens. Anyway, and he had done so much for me, I couldn't say no. He just said, "You should go, it's an honor." And my mother actually went, too, so it was pretty good.

MN: Did that surprise you, that your mother went?

YK: Yeah.

MN: And I guess you eventually graduated from Stevenson, and then you went to Long Beach Poly High.

YK: Right.

MN: What was the ethnic makeup of Long Beach Poly?

YK: Oh, let's see. Well, mainly white. There were a limited number of blacks and Hispanics and Japanese, because all of us Japanese were on the west side in the housing projects. So there was a mix.

MN: Now, you tried out for the B football team.

YK: Oh, yeah, in the senior year, my friend and I, we decided to try out for the B football team. And our team wasn't very good. [Laughs] And so I think we won, out of a seven-game schedule, we won one and tied one. Then the big insult was at the end of the school year, they took our picture, and I was a starter so I was in the front, but they didn't publish it in the album. So we never even got our picture in there, our senior album.

MN: Why didn't they put it in?

YK: Why didn't they what?

MN: Why did they not put your, the picture in?

YK: I don't know. We just got the album, it wasn't in there.

MN: Now, I remember you were talking about when you played football in the streets, you would do it barefoot.

YK: Oh, yeah, we would play in the project, there was a big grass area and we'd play football all the time. And basically I was always doing it barefoot because that made me fast. And I was the scatback.

MN: So when you had to wear shoes on your team at high school, did that really slow you down?

YK: Oh, yeah, because then you had to wear a helmet. Because when we used to play tackle on the playground, I'd wear a cap to cover my ears, and a sweatshirt over my t-shirt, and a little padding on my left side, and that was the extent of it for tackle football. But when we went out for regular football, we had the heavy helmet, we had the shoulder pads, we had the waist pads and we had these heavy cleated boots. And so I felt like I was running in slow motion.

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.