<Begin Segment 6>

SY: And you graduated high school before the war?

HS: Not really. Technically... when was it? April 29th is when we had to go to camp, so April 28th, I checked out of school. And then -- a little shy of graduation -- but when I was checking out, I never forgot it, but the principal's name was Paul Webb, and he saw me at the attendance desk. He called me in his office, and then he sat me down, and then he pointed his finger and he says, "I don't think you kids deserve your diplomas, so I'm not givin' 'em to you." And he kept his word. And I never said anything about it, but in 1967, the twenty-fifth reunion, my good friend Toru Iura called and says, "Hey, you coming to our," what was it, '67, our fifteen year... it was twenty-five years, 1967 from 1942. But so he said, "Are you coming to the reunion?" I says... [laughs].

SY: The high school reunion.

HS: Yeah, I told him --

SY: You had a high school...

HS: -- I says, "No." I says, "Because officially we're not on the graduation list," 'cause I called the board of education secretary and, when I came up, and I said, twelve of the names I remembered in my class, so I called her up and I said, "Are these names on the Summer '42 graduation thing?" He said, says, "No, they're not." And so I says, well, to heck with it. We're not, still not officially... I think 1977, Toru called me again, he says, "Are you coming?" And Toru, at '67 he went to the principal, and I've never forgotten, Norm Schechter was a, he used to be a referee for the Ram games, but he was one of these fair-minded persons, but he said, "I'll take care of it." So I got a diploma saying in 1967 class. But I said, that doesn't mean anything to me. And so Toru says, "Hard head." [Laughs] So it wasn't until 1987, I think it was, when Warren Furutani was elected to school board, I get another call from Toru and he said, "Hy," he said, "I'm tired of hearing you say you never got a diploma," 'cause his family went to Colorado. They, three families rented a boxcar and put all their possessions in there, so Toru left in April. So anyway, what happened was Warren, I wrote him a letter 'cause Toru kept buggin' me, and then, then I did write to him and then Jackie Goldberg was the president of the school board at the time, so Warren says, "I got this letter from Mr. Shishino." And she looked at that, she said, "That's terrible," and so she got the board to bring it up, and they voted to have a special graduation for us. So I forget, what was it, October or something? I forget, it was '97 or, '87 or '88, but anyway, they had a special graduation ceremony. There was two hundred people. It was, two cinematographers from Japan came. Channels Two, Four, Seven, Nine, and Thirteen, I think they came. And so that night it was on different channels at nine o'clock.

SY: So it was two hundred people graduating?

HS: No, two hundred people attended the special graduation.

SY: And how many...

HS: There was twelve of us that...

SY: Twelve of us, just twelve of you, just from Los Angeles High School.

HS: Still around. But they found fifteen names, but I don't know who the other three were. I only remember the twelve that I grew up with.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.