Densho Digital Archive - Yosh Nakamura Interview (denshovh-nyosh

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SY: And then what, how old were you when Pearl Harbor --

YN: Well, I was in the sixth grade when we moved, so I started in Columbia School, which is in El Monte. And I still have friends who were in that school. One, a very good friend -- his name is Wally Leonard -- he lives here in Whittier, and when I started teaching I found out that Wally was on the faculty of Whittier High School, so we connected again and he's been a good friend for a long time. And so whenever something good happens I like to invite him as -- like a couple of weeks ago when the city council invited me to come and recognized me for receiving the Congressional Gold Medal, I invited him to come and he showed up. And some of our neighbors and friends came too.

SY: So when the war broke out, when you heard about Pearl Harbor, do you remember where you were?

YN: Yes. Well, I would say that some of the amusing things that happened when I was in elementary school and high school is that one of our friends' father had a mortuary, and sometimes when we're waiting for the bus -- the funeral home was not too far away from the elementary school; in fact, it was across the street. So he would welcome us over and we'd go into the morgue and, "Ooh," and run out. [Laughs] And at that time we thought that was fun. So anyway, the Addleman family, I think, still runs the mortuary there in El Monte.

SY: And the son was a friend of yours, the one in the family?

YN: Well, he was a friend. There were quite a few friends and he was not a real close friend, but he was a friend, and we played together and things like that. And one of the interesting things is that when I was in Columbia there was a glee club teacher, director, with whom I worked, and when I started at Whittier High School as a teacher I found out Paul Gardner was a psychologist in the district, so again, this nice connection there. I would say that the people at Columbia were very, very good people and they seemed to get along very well together, and about (twenty), maybe longer, maybe (thirty) years ago we had a class reunion of the class of '39 from Columbia, and it was just amazing. (There) was a big turnout, and some of the teachers looked younger than the people who came for the reunion. [Laughs] And so it was really (fun).

SY: And of that reunion, how many were Japanese Americans?

YN: I don't recall. I don't really recall how many came.

SY: Were there others? There were quite a few?

YN: Yeah, there were quite a few, but when I went to Whittier, I mean to El Monte (Union) High School, I'd say about ten percent of the population, maybe fifteen percent, something like that, were Nisei. So we even had a Japanese club. It was called Japanese Lions Club, in El Monte (Union) High School.

SY: And that was postwar, though?

YN: That was before the war. Yes, prewar.

SY: That was before the war. Oh, so you actually went from Columbia to El Monte High School before the war?

YN: Yes. And when I went to El Monte High School we were the first class to be on the new campus, so it was a very new experience for a lot of people. We didn't know any better, but for those who had been in El Monte High School before, went from the old campus to the new one, it was quite a nice campus, and it still is a good campus.

SY: And so when you, when the war broke out, you were still what year in high school?

YN: I was a junior in high school.

SY: And it was in May, so you had another year.

YN: Yes, so we were forced to evacuate and went to Tulare Assembly Center on May 12th of 1942.