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MN: I want to ask you about the Boy Scouts a little bit because you were still active after the war with the Boy Scouts. Now, which troop did you join... or I guess not join, but you actually started to head it.

BS: Well, no, first I joined... when I came out of camp I was fourteen years old. So I was still Boy Scout age, and my parents had the restaurant in Little Tokyo, so I joined Koyasan Boy Scout at Little Tokyo.

MN: So for you, what were some of the hardest skills to master in the Boy Scouts?

BS: The hardest skill for me was swimming and lifesaving, and that was a requirement to get the Eagle badge, which is the highest award you can get in the Boy Scouts. So I just happened to start working at the YMCA downtown, and so I started, I had access to the swimming pool every day. And so I started, I had access to the swimming pool every day because I worked there throughout the summer. Then I got my membership there so I was able to go during school time. So I finally was able to qualify and pass the swimming merit badge and the lifesaving merit badge.

MN: You know, before the war, I always hear people say, Japanese Americans saying that they could not go into a public swimming pool. Maybe on day before cleaning they might be allowed. But you were working at the YMCA. Anybody have a problem with you as a Japanese American?

BS: Not after World War II, no. But I remember this place, Bimini over there on Vermont, they had problems. They would not let Japanese go in there. Then even, I heard even at the coliseum, on certain days, you couldn't get in there. Just on certain days you could get in to swim at the outdoor pool there. But after the war, I didn't feel there was prejudice like that.

MN: So you were a member of Koyasan Boy Scout troop.

BS: Yes.

MN: And then you eventually became scoutmaster there, is that right?

BS: Yes. So what happened there, I was a Boy Scout, and then I was assistant scoutmaster there, and I graduated into the army. Then when I came back, they asked me to be the scoutmaster. So I was scoutmaster there for about three years.

MN: But then you went to Evergreen. What happened?

BS: Okay. So after I was scoutmaster, I resigned and started to grow my own Boy Scout and Girl Scout at home. I got married, I had a girl and a boy, and he came Cub Scout age, he joined the Koyasan Cub Scouts. But then when it came Boy Scout age, he says he didn't want to join Koyasan. I said, "Why not?" The problem was, he wanted to join high school athletics. And Koyasan required that you have to be a drum and bugle member if you join the Koyasan Boy Scouts. So that's three nights a week: patrol meeting, troop meeting, and drum and bugle meeting. So that's three nights a week, so he wasn't able to do athletics in school. So I said, "Okay, you can join Evergreen Boy Scouts then." So that's how he transferred to Evergreen from Koyasan Cub Scouts there for going Boy Scouts. Sort of broke my heart, but at least he joined the Scouts.

MN: Can you share some of the highlights during your time you volunteered in the Boy Scouts? Particularly it was two generations that you were sharing about...

BS: Okay. So as I mentioned, I was scoutmaster at Koyasan. That was 1955 to 1957. And then, when my son came of age, that was later on, so we were now at Evergreen. So I was the assistant scoutmaster there. And backtracking, in 1957, one of my biggest glory days was we had the record of fifteen Boy Scouts getting the Eagle presentation at one Court of Honor. And there was one scout named Ray Miyokawa. And the reason I bring him up, because twenty-seven years later, when I was assistant scoutmaster at Evergreen, I was able to give his son, Roger Miyokawa, his Eagle badge. So to me, that was really a milestone. Give the father and son their Eagle badge. So that was one of my highlights of my Scouting career.

MN: And after this, you started to volunteer at the district level. What was that like?

BS: Volunteer at this district level because I felt that someone has to teach the new scout leaders the Scouting way. So it was adult classes we had once a month, we did a mock meeting. So we'd give them the program to do, some activities to do, and basically hand fed the new scout leaders. So then that way they could go back to the boys and give them a Boy Scout treatment. So I did that for a few years. And it was rewarding to me because at the end, I see young people that want to volunteer, learn the Scout way, and they went and taught the young boys again. So even though I didn't work directly with the boys, I worked with the adults for a number of years.

MN: Did you ever bring up any activities that you did in camp during these training sessions?

BS: Well, yes. Well, we talk about, we don't actually do it, the fire building or cooking or signaling, or knot tying, first aid. So some of those, we try and teach them some of the basic things. So that was rewarding. In fact, again, the Boy Scout troops were very strict. We always learned the basic, whether it's first aid or cooking or camping or knot tying. So we always beat the other troops in competition, the Caucasian troops, compared to the Japanese American troops. And even in the leadership program, was basically the same thing. We're teaching the adults knot-tying skills and stuff, we have competition. I'm finished the knots when they're halfway through doing the knots yet. So they were really amazed, not because of me, but the other Japanese leaders were able to lead way better than some of the Caucasians because of the Boy Scout training as boys, not as adults. So we see it carried through to adult life, too.

MN: And when you were training a lot of these adults, what was the ethnic makeup of these people you trained?

BS: Majority were Hispanic, since it was East Los Angeles area. Once in a while we'd get Japanese Americans, but not too many. It was mainly Hispanic. But the training leaders were, probably half of them were Japanese Americans.

MN: So Heart Mountain last year had this grand opening in 2011 of the interpretive center. And there's this photo of you in your Boy Scout uniform and you're raising a flag. How did you feel about being given that honor?

BS: Oh, that was a great feeling in many ways. Because as a Boy Scout in camp, we raised the flag for a period of maybe one month. Every morning we had to go raise that flag. And it brought back memories, but then it brought back memories and gave me the honor of raising the flag at the grand opening of the museum. And the learning center, it shows America what camp was like, and yet, we were able to practice the American democracy by having the Boy Scouts in camp. And then I was able to raise the flag again at the opening. So our Boy Scout troop, we donated the flagpole for the learning center. So we got organized, we got a few hundred dollars each, and gave them enough money to do the flagpole. So in return, they asked us to raise the flag. So the two of us raised the flag in camp, we got to do it again.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.