<Begin Segment 7>

TI: I want to go back to Collins because now that the Japanese leave Seattle, and you talked about earlier how they were such a large component of Collins. How did Collins change? What happened during the war? What was Collins like during the war?

DB: Well, I think it turned into... the Japanese kids were gone, okay, so the Chinese kids, still came to the field house. And of course more and more black kids filled in as that population changed. And the kids that came to Collins, there seemed to be two groups, because I think the supervision. The black kids that lived -- because there was a lot of, there was police interaction -- the kids that lived at Yesler Terrace was always a problem. Those kids were always in trouble (...)... but the kids that came to Collins, and I'm not giving you scientific analysis here, but the kids that came to Collins, the black kids that came to Collins, did not get into trouble that I know about. And some of 'em went on to responsible leadership positions in the community. And one (...) David Holden was a musician. But that era -- oh, when they came back, then I think it was kind of business as usual. The kids were back, and they maintained those sports, and I think that the Japanese were a strong element of all the teams going forward.

TI: Right, so after the war, the Japanese came back, and you played sports with some of them? I'm curious, did the Japanese Americans ever talk about where they were?

DB: No, we didn't. We were kids, number one, we were playing ball, number two, and we just, we never... at least I didn't. I knew... and there was a lot going on during the war. I mean, you know, there was a lot of hysteria and concern. Seattle, of course, you were here, it was a big port of embarkation, and every once in a while there was this fear campaign with the glass balls that were floating in and had to have the mines associated with them. (...) We were at war. But I think the relocation, I think bringing them back into the community, Dad was happy as can be, of course, and reestablishing all of those families. But there wasn't a lot of rehash or discussion of that, or recriminations.

TI: Yeah, the reason I ask, I was wondering... as a city kid, my field house was Rainier playfield. And it was a very diverse neighborhood, and I played not only basketball, but football down there also. And kids can be pretty cruel at times, especially around kind of race relations. I was one of maybe two Japanese on a team that was predominately African American and whites. And there were times -- and this is back in the '60s -- we would taunt each other. And I was wondering if that ever happened at Collins where, because there was Chinese and Japanese, who were actually at war, the countries were at war, and then you had the blacks, and then you maybe had Jewish kids, if there was any of that tension?

DB: Well, there may have been, but I never heard about it. And I know Dad would never have tolerated it, anything that he could supervise. I'm just confident; I'm not being Pollyannish about that, I just think that was probably a non-racial zone. I mean, everybody was there to play basketball, and everybody was there to learn to play basketball. And so I think (...) he was such a humanist and really a real democrat with a small "d," (...)... he may have had private sessions with his kids in terms of the families, the relocation, 'cause he was quite personal with some of these kids, and of course I was not old enough to be aware of that. And the many that came to our house at Green Lake over the years always with a present, Christmas, I thought tangerines only came from Japan. [Laughs] (...) But there was, and there always something, if he wanted something done in the yard or if there (...) was always a special (gift). If he couldn't steal it from the Seattle Parks Department, he would get it from somebody down in the (Duwamish) Valley. So (those) relationships just picked right up again.

And, of course, he knew, reading into it, he knew where a lot of these kids were going. He knew because he had talked to the FBI (...). But where I came back in, (what I noticed) is the kids came back in, they fit right back in. Seattle, I think, was not as racially harsh as other parts of the country. We were all first immigrants here, first and second, we were all Issei, Nisei here, and we came without a lot of baggage. When I went back east to school in Montreal, which is a pretty reasonable town, the animosity between religious groups, it shocked me. And I'm (then) a post-college young man, it was shocking.

TI: But yet there was those pockets. I, again, remember some... because when you're in the Park Department you have your neighborhoods, and then you travel right through the other teams. And so going up to places up north like Wedgwood and others, and we heard the n-word thrown at some of our teammates. And our coach, who was Jewish, would just get so angry that that would happen, and use it, to his credit, as a teaching moment. That this is not acceptable, and we're not to retaliate with other words, but we'll show them on the field.

DB: Well, that was everywhere in America. I'm not a blind fool with this whole thing. I'm just willing to bet you if we could replay or (be) flies on the wall, none of that was tolerated at Collins. (...) My choice to go to a big public hospital in Chicago, (was) a metaphor for me of the Collins kind of experience. (...) When I went to Chicago to be an intern, and looking for a place to stay, you had to watch where you went from block to block because this would be a black block and this would be a German block. And you didn't want to be caught on the wrong side of (...) the issue at six o'clock. (...) We never saw that in Seattle.

TI: Right, yeah.

DB: Seattle did not have a slum, Seattle did not have a ghetto. You had the inner city, you had this, but you know, the Japanese were moving out to Jefferson and Mount Baker and Seward Park and places like that. (...) And even at Roosevelt, which is probably the snobbiest school... we had two sectors (...). We had the Green Lake kids and we had the Laurelhurst Windermere kids. The way we handled that as Green Lake kids is we could beat 'em on the field. All the girls wanted to date us guys from Green Lake. [Laughs] Their fathers didn't appreciate this. But sports, again, for the underclass, the sports metaphor is a great American story (...).

MG: The tennis thing, one of the things that will be shown in some of the articles that I've given you, that Dad, along with Vic Denny, I don't know if you recognize that name, but he was a big restaurateur in Seattle and a big tennis guy, he was a Seattle Tennis Club type tennis guy, my dad and Vic Denny started a playground tennis program that was unique in the city of Seattle, getting the playground kids to have access to tennis that previously only the kids from Laurelhurst or Wedgewood or Broadmoor could do. So it became huge. And Tom Gorman, who's not Japanese or any other minority, but he is a product, the U.S. Davis Cup, everything, and he was a product of that program, that playground tennis program.

TI: I'm glad you mentioned that because the whole tennis program through the Parks Department, by the time I got around, was pretty big, and in terms of the Asian community, was the Yee family, Amy Yee, and she did a lot of that on Beacon Hill. And again, it was these lessons on the public tennis courts. We all played tennis.

MG: Some of that reputation, we'll say that my dad, he and Vic Denny were the two that basically started that program.

DB: Well, tennis, you need... it's extra equipment. Seattle didn't, Parks Department talked to Dad about this, but he said we can't afford it. There wasn't too much special equipment for the kids.

MG: A racquet and ball, how special is that? [Laughs]

DB: Well, a kid's got to have a racquet. But it was more, when we played baseball for the Seattle Parks Department, and at Green Lake especially, you know where the number one diamond is, a real hook foul got you a ball in the lake. So there was always a guy on the hitting team that always had to play the walkway out there to keep the ball... 'cause that was your one ball for the day. (...) Dad was well-known among everybody that works in the business, and Royal Brougham had articles on him all the time, the Collins kids doing this or Gene doing one thing or another, gave some angst down at the central office where they weren't too supportive of Dad. He was proselytized to go to Laurelhurst. They wanted winning teams in Laurelhurst, they couldn't win up there. They were always beat by not only Collins, but they'd be beat by Garfield, Rainier, and places like that. So they tried to get Dad to go out there (but) he wouldn't budge. They pressured the city council, (and) the director.

TI: Wow, that's interesting that they would have that kind of, they would use those kind of levers just to get a winning team, they would try to get the best coach in the city.

DB: (...) It's hard for people to identify with now because Little League this and Little League that (...) What the parks do now is they organize schedules, the field for other people to play. But the Parks Department was recreation in those days. The population was smaller (with) neighborhood activities. But to have a losing Parks Department neighborhood club was not the image they wanted. They were after Dad for years to go out there. He wouldn't even consider it. It would have been a short drive for him and other things, but he wouldn't touch it.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2013 Densho. All Rights Reserved.