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MN: I want to ask you about your school situation, because it's very unusual. Can you share with us which school that you started to go to?

IH: You mean in El Monte?

MN: In El Monte.

IH: Well, unfortunately, it started off rather badly. We were put in a segregated school. I think the story's fairly well-known. School that would allow Mexican kids and Japanese kids. A rundown, dilapidated school called Lexington. And because of that, the irony was that right next door to where we lived, in fact, if I stepped out of our gate in the back of our yard, I would have been right on the school grounds of an all-white school, and I couldn't go there. But my father, shortly after we enrolled at Lexington, he went to the nearby school district, neighboring school district called Mountain View School District. And he talked to the principal of the Mountain View grammar school. It was an integrated school, and the principal allowed to switch districts, and we were able to go there. It was a nice arrangement, and I think without my father having spoken to the principal, we probably would have remained in that rundown school.

MN: Now how far was the Mountain View school, and how did you get there?

IH: Yeah, well, because it was outside of our district, we had to walk about half a mile to the bus stop where, which was right on the edge of the district. And then we rode a bus the rest of the way to school.

MN: So was the other bus not allowed into the other school district, into Lexington?

IH: Yeah, the limit's right up to the district line.

MN: And at the Mountain View school, what was the ethnic makeup?

IH: Generally white, I'd say eighty-five percent white. Lot of Latino kids, Japanese kids.

MN: And how did you interact with the other students?

IH: Very well.

MN: Were there any African American students?

IH: I don't recall 'em if they were.

MN: Were there any African Americans in El Monte?

IH: Well, that's another thing. El Monte had a reputation of being very discriminatory. My understanding was that black families could not live within the city limits, and if they did, if they came to work, they had to be out by sundown or they would have been arrested. And the Mexican population, again, they were discriminated. They had to all live in an area, a place called Hicks Camp, which was all Mexican. Not only in the housing, but in the swimming pools, swimming, and the theaters, there was segregated seating.

MN: So when you were growing up in El Monte, who were your playmates?

IH: Mostly the neighborhood Caucasian kids.

MN: What did you do after school? What sort of games did you play?

IH: Oh, the usual. Marbles, and we had a bicycles. Liked to ride bicycles around. Played little games, maybe baseball. Whatever young kids do.

MN: What did you do on Saturdays?

IH: Well, I don't think it was much different. Went to matinees. But we did go into town, big thing, going to Little Tokyo.

MN: Can I go back to when you went to the matinees? You had to sit in a segregation section?

IH: No.

MN: No.

IH: But in El Monte we did. We used to go to another theater which was outside of El Monte which was not segregated.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.