<Begin Segment 10>

MN: Now, I wanted to ask you about your good friends Roy and Elmer Rush. Can you give us a little bit about their background?

BT: Well, their parents came from Germany, and they lived about half a block from where I lived. And Roy was a year a younger than me, and Elmer was a year older than me. I was right in between. But Roy and I, we buddied around all the time.

MN: Did you go over their house, and did they come over to your house?

BT: Yeah. It was both. So if I wasn't home I was usually at his place, and vice versa.

MN: Did you ever envy the fact that they had a father and you didn't?

BT: No, that, that never bothered me.

MN: Did you share your foods from your different backgrounds?

BT: What do you mean?

MN: Did he eat gohan at your place and did you eat German food at his place?

BT: No, I never ate at his place. Yeah, we had, at home we had just Japanese food.

MN: Did he ever try any Japanese food?

BT: Yeah, one New Year's we had some octopus, so I gave him a piece and he kept chewin' on it, chewin' on it, chewin' on it. And he couldn't swallow, so I told him, "Look," I says, "throw it out if you don't want it." [Laughs]

MN: So what was the favorite hobby between you and Roy?

BT: The what?

MN: Hobby.

BT: Hobby? We used to make model airplanes. Yeah, that took up a lot of our time. It was a lot of fun.

MN: How do you make model airplanes? Do you buy a kit?

BT: We'd buy a kit, and it has the, you had to make it, assemble it. It's made out of balsa wood, and you, it makes out a frame, and you'd put, you'd glue paper on the frame that you made. They used to call it silk paper. And once you got the, all the paper, you would sprinkle it with water, and when it dried the paper would shrink, so that strengthened the whole structure.

MN: You talked about one, this model you made where the propeller, after it spun it around, it would fold in. Who came up with that idea?

BT: I don't know. It was, everybody did that. Yeah, that, because when you're flying these model airplanes the power is to get the plane as high as you can and try to catch a thermal or a... then the rest of the time it would glide. So by having the propeller fold back you have less resistance. So you, because the, I guess the object of it was to stay up as long as you can.

MN: Did you have any gas powered model airplanes?

BT: Yes. I wasn't too successful at that, but yeah, I had a gas powered...

MN: What do you mean you weren't too successful?

BT: I never, well, I only made, I think, two, two or three, and it never flew right. It would go up and it would come down, that's it. But I had better luck with the, what we call rubber powered. We used strands of rubber and wind it up, and that turned the propeller. I had better luck with that.

MN: I would think, like, the gas powered one would be easier to fly, but I guess I'm wrong.

BT: Well, I guess it's probably the way you make the plane too. So, well, mine never worked out, anyway. [Laughs]

MN: Now, where in Fresno did you go out to fly these airplanes?

BT: There's a lot of open fields in Fresno. Like one of our favorite places where we went to fly, just among ourselves, now Fresno State College has taken up a lot of that land, and now in Fresno you have homes all the way to the county line. Before it was all open field out there.

[Interruption]

MN: I want you to brag a little bit, and I want you to share with us the model airplane contest that you entered in the summer of 1941, just before the war started.

BT: Yeah. That was a very proud moment for me. We had a model airplane contest, it was held at the Fresno County Fairgrounds, and it has three events, like the fuselage model and a stick, what they call a stick model, and hand glider. And two of the events, I took first place. In the third one I took second place. The overall, the overall time, the person that took second to my first, and the first the one I took second, he had better overall time, so he took the first place in the overall and I came in second on that.

MN: When you say overall time, are you talking about how long the plane was in the air?

BT: Yes. The moment you let it go and the moment it hits the ground.

MN: What category did you place second in?

BT: Pardon?

MN: Which category?

BT: It's the, what we call the hand launch glider. It's made out of solid balsa wood, and you would just throw it to the wind and hope, hoping that you catch a nice updraft.

MN: So do you think the guy who took first place was just lucky to catch a good updraft?

BT: Well, yeah, that's, it... once you let the plane go, it's out of your hand. It's, if the plane doesn't, if there's no updraft or thermal where the plane goes, then you're out of luck. You'll just come down.

MN: Were there a lot of Japanese American boys who were in this hobby?

BT: Oh yes.

MN: So you got the, you got two first place ribbons and a, one second place ribbon. Did you go home and show your mother?

BT: I don't know if I showed it to her or not.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.