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BY: Back to your youth, so you made The Seattle Times at eleven for winning a punt, pass and kick competition, what was your childhood like? What were your favorite hangouts and activities?

TI: Yeah, so I grew up, up until fifth grade, up on Beacon Hill, and there were a lot of Asian Americans up on Beacon Hill, Beacon Hill Elementary School. Boy, I'm guessing maybe half my class was Asian American. And on my street, I lived on Nineteenth and College, we would have, play street football, and could easily get sort of an eight on eight, and it would almost be all Japanese Americans playing, there was that many kids in my neighborhood. So I grew up in an environment where being Asian American felt like the norm, and I didn't know anything really different. But in sixth grade, our family moved to the Genessee Park area, and there weren't very many Asian Americans then, and so that was a different environment.

Where I won this football contest, the Rainier playfield, I started playing organized football there. And the squad was predominately African American, I think there were two Asian Americans and two white players, and the rest were African Americans. So this was a very different environment for me, and I started learning about, I think more about racism. What was interesting, we were a really good football team. I think we took the city championships two years in a row, and our coach was this older Jewish white man, James Greenfield. I say "older," he probably wasn't that old when he was coaching, he just seemed like an old... but a tremendous coach. But I remember one time when he lost his temper. We were playing a team up north, I think it might be Wedgwood or some team. And we were a stronger team, and I think by halftime we had pretty much won the game. And our coach was putting the second and third stringers in to play, and with our second and third stringers, the other team was maybe as good or many in some cases stronger, so they were starting to make headway. And I remember during that came, sort of towards the end, where one of the second stringers came back and he was in tears, we could all see it. And we said, "What's going on?" He says, "They're calling us the n-word out there." And I remember our coach just getting livid. He was so angry, and I'm not sure if it was the best thing, but he would then, at that point he yelled out and said, "Okay, first stringers gather," so we all, I was on the first team, we'd go there, and he said, "This is what's going on. They're out there calling us the n-word, and that's just not acceptable. So first team, you're back out there, and show them who we are." So we went out there, and of course, the first team's back in, we're bigger, stronger, we're faster, and we just blew right through them, because we were, at that point, angry, too. But it was such an interesting moment for me to experience. Because I wasn't African American, but being part of that and just seeing this and seeing what was going on, it was just a, I remember, a powerful moment. And to have this white, Jewish man so angry, I'm like twelve, thirteen, I was trying to process all that. But then it just opened up this other world that...

BY: Did you feel anger yourself?

TI: Yeah, I did, but it was part of, because you're caught up in it. And I said, oh yeah, this is so wrong, how could they call my friends the n-word? We're going to go out there and show them. So yeah, it was something that started opening my eyes up to some of the things that were going on.

BY: I'm curious, did you, the coach have you shake hands afterwards?

TI: You know, I don't remember that. Back then, I don't think we did that, like we do with kids today where they line up and shake hands. I don't recall that happening. I think I do recall, though, our coach going over and talking to the other coach, and I think there were angry words exchanged.

BY: Wow. So other favorite hangouts? What did you guys do for...

TI: On Beacon Hill, I remember fondly, up on Beacon Hill we called it the Junction. It's right by the, well, they moved it slightly from where the public library was up on Beacon Hill. It's just a couple blocks from Beacon Hill, the old Beacon Hill Elementary School. And one of my old hangouts was there was a drugstore called Owens Drugs that sold comic books. The owners were Japanese Americans, and so it was just kind of a nice place where I didn't have to buy the comic books but I could sit there and read them. [Laughs] And so that was a fun place to go. I was very much a reader when I was a kid, and would hang out a lot at the public library and read comic books. I remember in the summer, at one point, the librarian actually, they had this... it wasn't necessarily a contest, but just a way to show how many books you read over the summer, and you would put this up there. At one point, the librarian was saying, "Did you really read all these books?" Because I would literally take two or three books home, read them in a few days, and come back and say, "Okay, I need more books," because I just loved to read.

BY: What kinds of books?

TI: Oh, I remember like the Danny Dunn series, mysteries, biographies, I loved biographies, I loved to read about people. Science fiction was something else that I...

BY: Do you remember the first book you read?

TI: I mean...

BY: Or at the library?

TI: Not really. Yeah, I can't remember.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2020 Densho. All Rights Reserved.