<Begin Segment 3>

TI: Back then, did you and your family participate in very many Japanese community events?

SA: Not that much. My grandfather did. My grandfather was very active, and here in Hollywood, I think they had some kind of a gathering, I think at... I don't know if it was a church or what, but he was very active. And he was also a very strong Buddhist, and he helped the Nishi Hongwanji, which is in Los Angeles, build the church there.

TI: And so when the church or the temple had a, like a picnic or something like that, did you and your family go?

SA: Oh, yes, we always participated.

TI: Tell me about that. Where would the picnics be? Like tell me more about that, the picnic, where was it, do you remember where it was?

SA: I was, I think, at Elysian Park, that's where the usual gathering point, yeah. But I don't remember too much.

TI: How about Japanese language school? Did you go to language school?

SA: Yeah. Me? Yeah, I attended. I wasn't a very good student, but I attended Japanese school.

TI: And do you remember which language school, where it was?

SA: This was in Gardena. The family, the nursery was sold, and my grandfather bought a property in Gardena, so we all moved to Gardena.

TI: And how old were you when you moved to Gardena?

SA: I must have been about seven or eight, maybe seven.

TI: And so back then, what was Gardena like? Now I go down there and drive around Gardena and Torrance, it's just so many houses and everything. When you were a child, what was Gardena like?

SA: Oh, it was very rural, not like what it is today.

TI: What kind of farming?

SA: Well, my grandfather bought a ten-acre property, and he had like a wholesale nursery, and he also had a nursery on Western Avenue in Redondo Beach, and it was called Western Avenue Nursery.

TI: Earlier I told you that I came from Seattle, and when you said Western Avenue, in Seattle, that's the street that all the Japanese farmer would do their wholesale.

SA: Oh, is that right?

TI: It's interesting how you to go city to city, there's all these sort of common names.

SA: It's still Western Avenue. It's a long street.

TI: In Seattle, too, it's still Western Avenue. When you were growing up in, say, junior high school and high school, how would your friends describe you? If they were to talk about you and say, "Oh, Sakaye is like this," how do you, like personality, what would they say about you, your friends?

SA: I don't know. I don't know what they say about me. We were just a group, a very friendly group, and we always got together, even at high school, we had a lot of wonderful times.

TI: So what would be a typical activity that you would do with your friends?

SA: I wasn't all that very active, so it wasn't... just a friendly gathering at lunchtime at high school. I wasn't all that very active.

TI: How about as a student? As a student, your grades, how would you...

SA: Oh, average. [Laughs]

TI: And was there like a subject or something you were more interested in?

SA: Oh, I always was interested in home economics. That was my favorite.

TI: Good.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright (c) 2017 Densho. All Rights Reserved.