<Begin Segment 9>

SY: So this was kind of a... do you remember it as being a real happy time for you? Did you enjoy living in Boyle Heights?

CI: It was okay.

SY: Okay. You had a lot of friends, though, right?

CI: But we didn't have cars, so it was kind of limited to school. Otherwise you had to walk... I don't know if you remember where Eagle Street was. You don't remember, okay.

SY: Yeah, Boyle Heights is quite, it's several miles.

CI: It is. So we used to have to walk everywhere. If you wanted to walk to see your friend, it was probably a couple of miles. Which I guess we didn't think too much about it.

SY: And all your friends, were all your friends then in Boyle Heights? Were they all Japanese Americans?

CI: Except Dora, there was Dora Montez who lived on Eagle Street, was my best friend.

SY: Oh, she was your best friend.

CI: Yes. And, of course, she was in my class at school.

SY: And how did that happen that you had a best friend who was not Japanese?

CI: Well, she was probably best friends with other people on Eagle Street, like Grace Kawahara. And I'm sure Peggy would remember her also. She lived on Eagle Street. But it just happened that she was Mexican American.

SY: Close.

CI: Yeah, and I was very fond of her.

SY: And were there very many other Mexican Americans?

CI: Oh, yeah, there was Carmen Mesa, also Mexican. And I don't remember too many other people.

SY: You don't remember, like, were there very many Jewish kids?

CI: I don't remember. I didn't know that there were people like Jews. It's something we never spoke about, and I didn't know there was a Jewish, it's not a nationality, but anyway...

SY: Religion.

CI: ...Jewish people until I went to Chicago and I went to Hyde Park High School, which is, in Chicago is a very outstanding school. And it was near the University of Chicago. And probably the population of the student body was predominately Jewish, Greek. And so one day I asked this, I was one of three in a lab group. And one of my lab partners had this beautiful red hair, and I just assumed that people with red hair were Irish. So naive, you know. So I asked her, "Are you Irish?" And her boyfriend, who happened to be the third lab partner, said, "Irish? With a name like Zimmerman?" [Laughs] So I said, "What are you talking about?" He said, "She's Jewish, of course." And that's when I first found out that there was something like... I didn't ask, "What is Jew?" But it was something that we didn't speak about at home. We didn't speak about it in school. So anyway...

SY: Yeah, because Boyle Heights at that time was pretty predominately Jewish and Japanese. So you never saw a difference at all?

CI: No, no. It was something that if your parents don't speak about it, you don't. You don't know.

SY: So when you were in high school, when you went to high school, was that a big transition for you going from junior high school to high school?

CI: Well, it was in camp.

SY: Oh, I see.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright &copy; 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.