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BN: And then all of, you and your siblings are going to school. I mean, in later years, they would call kids "latchkey kids." Was that the situation where you would kind of be on your own after school?

RO: Not too much because she worked at a school. And so she would get home...

BN: So she had similar hours as school.

RO: Yeah, similar hours, right.

BN: And then you mentioned that your friends were mostly either Jewish or Mexican American.

RO: Yeah. And in my neighborhood it was almost all Latino, but there were a few Jewish kids, So I was friends with both. It was actually... you have pluses and minuses. Another plus was we had gangs in our area, and they were not interested in me at all because I wasn't Latino. So I'd pass them on the street, and we'd be friends and I'd say hi and all that. But one of my friends who was Latino got beat up because he would not join the gang. So that was a plus for me, not being Latino.

BN: You were insulated, I guess, somehow. You wrote about, also, that you encountered sort of this racist song that...

RO: Oh yeah, that was so funny. This was about thirty, forty years later. I was doing some work at the university near our house, and one of the teachers... no, he was a student but he was an older student, he told me about that. He said, "We sang this song about you guys," and then he starts singing it in the class and I go oh god, how embarrassing for both of us. [Laughs] And there was a younger woman in another class... I taught parts of classes. The teachers wanted someone to come in with some experience, talk about their experience. And so she was younger and she went through the same exercise and said, "We still sing this song about the Japanese." Not much progress. [Laughs]

BN: That's funny, yeah. That's, what, sixty, seventy years later. And then from there you went to Hollenbeck, right?

RO: Hollenbeck junior high, middle school.

BN: What do you remember about the school? Was it a good school?

RO: It was on the east side, which means automatically that the schools were not very good. The schools on the east side didn't get the attention that was given to schools in the other parts of the city. So, for example, we didn't have a swimming pool, where the ones on the west side had swimming pools. And since the students were, many of them did not go on to college, the teachers that they had were just not the same quality as the teachers in other parts of the city. But when you're in your... I guess, how old was I then? Maybe eleven, twelve, somewhere around there, doesn't matter. Schools didn't really matter to me, it was just a place where we... and I did some work, but it wasn't that big a deal.

BN: And you had mentioned that you got into sports, right? Basketball...

RO: I don't know whether you're aware of that, but that was, and still is, a JA thing, right? There were different levels...

BN: Just different divisions and groups, talent levels, very highly organized.

RO: I was in the low talent groups. But it was fun; I really enjoyed that. So I played basketball up through college. And I was in one of the lower ones, so as a consequence, I was one of the better players. [Laughs] It was okay, I enjoyed that.

BN: And would you get to travel around the city and the state to tournaments and so on?

RO: I don't think we went... no, because I don't think they did that with the people in the lower groups, but we played a lot in our area.

BN: Did you continue Japanese school, or after the war that was it?

RO: Yeah, Japanese was out at that point.

BN: Sure. I think one story you wrote about in your memoir was about being able to take the streetcar with your friends to USC games and things.

RO: Yeah.

BN: Can you talk a bit about that?

RO: It's interesting. Back then, the three of us, two Latinos and I, we were good friends. We would go to events and we'd sell newspapers as a way of getting enough money to get in. And we would be out until... well, the games might end at ten p.m., eleven p.m., late at night, we'd just get on the public, whatever it's called, and come home, and nobody worried about that. So in those days, it was okay. We were probably thirteen, fourteen years old, were out until ten o'clock at night, and nobody cared.

BN: These are... at that time, these are still the streetcars, right?

RO: Streetcars, yeah.

BN: They hadn't torn those out yet.

RO: Right.

BN: And then from there you went on to Roosevelt.

RO: Roosevelt.

BN: Now, both of these are fairly largish schools, right? Do you remember about how many people were...

RO: No, I don't remember.

BN: But, I mean, you're in a class of, like, hundreds of people.

RO: I'm sorry?

BN: There's hundreds of people in your class? I mean, not your individual class, but your..

RO: Yeah, in my year.

BN: High school year. And I assume it's similar demographically, right?

RO: Mostly Mexican.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.