<Begin Segment 4>

SY: So you spent your growing up years, then, in Rosemead and El Monte. That was all through elementary school.

YN: Yes. Well, there was a picture of my brother in his elementary school, and he went to middle school and at the time it was a junior high school, I guess, and he was in Muscatel School. That was closer to town than El Monte. I went to Rio Hondo Elementary, which went up to grade six, and very interestingly enough, I started school in Rio Hondo and then I ended my educational career at Rio Hondo College. [Laughs] It was a happy coincidence. But when I was in the elementary school there were quite a few Nisei in my classes and some of us had limited English proficiency, and I know that I did at the time because we didn't speak too much English at home. My father spoke mostly in Japanese. And so my first year was pretty tough. They held me back for half a semester while my English got better and then they put me back into my regular class in second grade. But I just remember there was one Nisei fellow named Yoshiaki Hazama who, in giving reports -- we had to get up and talk about something -- and he talked about the hazards of smoking. I still remember the, "If you like to cough a lot, go ahead and smoke." [Laughs] But because the school had quite a few Nisei in it, it was a very comfortable place.

I had a very wonderful first grade teacher. Her name was Ruth Green Paul, and I'll tell you more about her as we go along, but she was a very compassionate person, (and) I felt like she was always watching out for me. She was very, very fond of the Japanese Americans in the school. And this carried on for a long time.

SY: So you would say that in this community, then, was the community predominately Japanese American, or was it very mixed ethnically?

YN: Well, quite mixed ethnically. The people whom I knew who were Japanese Americans largely had farms, so we had a farm, the Watanabes had a farm, Hazamas had a farm, various people had farms. So I would say that in a sense it was an integrated community. I mean, we were not isolated except that we had farms and city folks had their homes in the city, but in the school we were treated quite well, and I was quite happy in the school.

SY: You have fond memories of living there.

YN: Yes, it was quite, quite good. And when we had to move, we had leased the property, and so we moved to another place, El Monte, and we had our house jacked up and moved literally to the site in El Monte. And by that time I --

SY: So in other words, the house was yours but the property was not?

YN: That's right. Because my father was a Japanese citizen, my brother was a Japanese citizen, and I wasn't old enough to be a property owner or lease or... so we had to have the help of someone else, so some Nisei helped my father out. So we moved to El Monte, and there too the community was quite integrated with some Japanese farmers. I know that another neighbor about a half a block away was in the insurance business, and we lived where there were dairies, and there was a German American that had a dairy, and took good care of us. As a young lad I used to like to go fishing on the pier if I could, and Mr. Seifert, who happened to be the father of Gene Seifert, my friend, would invite us to go fishing. But he said, "You have to come over and help me milk the cows," so in the morning we'd get up, and four o'clock or whatever it was, early, we'd milk the cows because the cows can't wait. One of the problems of owning your own business, having a farm, and especially having a dairy, the cows have to be milked. So he said, "If you help us we'll get started and go fishing," so every so often we'd have a chance to go fishing on the pier, which was quite a bit of fun.

SY: He would drive you to the, all the way to the --

YN: Yes, he would take us there.

SY: All the way to the Santa Monica Pier?

YN: Well, I don't recall just exactly where it was. [Laughs] It seemed like it was closer, but I'm not, I don't remember. Maybe it was in Long Beach or somewhere. I'm not sure. But all I know, we got in the car, we ended up with these poles.

SY: So you spent your elementary school years in -- this was all before camp.

YN: Yes.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.