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MN: Now let me ask you about your high school, because you went to two different high schools, you started out at Dorsey. Tell me what the ethnic makeup of Dorsey was at that time.

Mo N: Probably ninety percent white, some black, some Japanese.

[Interruption]

MN: We were talking about Dorsey High School. What was the ethnic makeup? You said it was a lot of, mostly Caucasians?

Mo N: About ninety percent white as I recall. And the rest was black and Japanese. There weren't any Latinos.

MN: And how did the different groups interact?

Mo N: Well, not very well. Being Japanese we stuck to ourselves, the white kids pretty much, right, the white kids were kind of stratified. There were whites that lived up on the hill, right up toward the Baldwin Hills who had money, and they were working class and middle class whites that lived in the valley with us, Jefferson area. They were mostly Western European Jews. And about the time we got there, the Jewish movement was from both the west side and from Boyle Heights to Fairfax. So they were transitioning, and that's the opening of the space for the Japanese to move in. Yeah, so that's what we were, so there was a lot of racial tensions when I was there, couple of race riots or racial fights. Yeah, there were still a lot of racial fights going on throughout the whole city. We were just beginning to integrate Mount Vernon and L.A. High. Dorsey was just... well, Dorsey because of the Jefferson, that thing there, that prong of people of color going west on Jefferson, there was always some presence of people of color. So when I was there, we had the first black student body president at Dorsey, and this guy comes from a real good family, strong family, who were athletes and scholars. The Carr, Carr family. But yeah, there was always shit going on. I was always getting into trouble, we had some bullshit, people calling, using the term "Jap" and stuff like that.

So when my cousin, when my blood came over to me and said, "Come on over to Poly and check out all these fine Japanese girls over there and see what it is." And all the guys I grew up with, my buddies, they all lived around Centenary, in that area right in there around Normandie, we were the furthest west, Tenth Avenue and Jefferson, came close to Crenshaw. And I'm the only one going to Dorsey. So okay, all of us who grew up going to Centenary. So I said all right, so I ditched school one day and I went over there and hung out at Poly, and I liked what I saw. So I got a friend, used a friend's address, then I transferred over to Poly. So I spent half a semester at Poly, enjoyed the hell out of myself. Ditched school, we were over at Roosevelt fooling around, and we got busted over there. Then they found out where I really lived. So they kicked me out of Poly, so I went back to Dorsey for one semester and I hated it. So I went back to Poly and talked to the vice principal and asked him permission to transfer back to Poly again. And he gave me his okay, so I came back to Poly, and my senior year was spent at Poly. It was, I enjoyed myself, appreciated that from the old white buzzard. Something you guys would never experience unless you were in Hawaii or Japan, but Poly summer school was the attraction of the attractions. All the Buddhahead kids in the county used to come to fuckin' Poly for summer school. So it was like Tokyo High School, it was Mecca. And so all of us growing up, so kids like my age, we knew most of the kids of our age group in the whole county. New people from up around Oxnard and up to San Gabriel, out towards San Diego way, so we got to know, people, everybody traveled to go to the dances, places and stuff like that, so we were really, yeah, we were into each other.

MN: So you know when you were going through high school, transferring back and forth, what were you majoring in?

Mo N: Woodshop.

MN: Why did you choose that?

Mo N: Huh?

MN: Why did you choose that?

Mo N: Well, I was gonna be a carpenter. And then one of my good friends was working at, he was a couple years ahead, was working at, we used to make rattan furniture out of bamboo, and was making a living doing that. I figured that's what I was going to, that's what I'm going to do, or work and make furniture or something, cabinetmaking. So I got into that, so it took three years in high school, two woodshop every year, all the way through. I had a good time. I took... give you an example of the classes I took, acapella choir, ceramics, boy's food, that was a joke. There was no boy's food, it was just food class, and those of us who wanted to take it had to join these girls in their class. So me and this other guy, we were two boys in an all-girls class, we had a good time. Eating all their food and stuff. [Laughs] I took tailoring and learned how to do sewing and doing some stuff, minor repairs. These are all the classes at Poly. I don't remember none of them classes over at Dorsey.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.