<Begin Segment 16>

VI: So I tell the story about the West Side Story. I don't think you heard about my story? We were in the OTs and the Block 16 were the Valley Boys. And they had a good baseball team, they were good sports, so we'd always compete with each other. In fact, sometimes they would even compete for girls. So that was kind of a hard feeling. So it got to the point where we're going to have a big show off. What started was my brother-in-law used to date Mary's sister.

TI: Well, they married. I mean, not only dated, they eventually married.

VI: Well, they started from when they were in Broadway High School.

TI: Broadway High School, right. And so George Tanabe was an OT, and then Auntie Ishii, or Mom's sister, was Block 16.

VI: Block 16.

TI: So it is like the Romeo and Juliet...

VI: Yeah, because every time they go, and then couple of times when the OT person was going after the same girl, we got kind of a little rough. So they finally decided we're going to have it out.

TI: Have it out like a rumble, essentially, a fight.

VI: Right. And then it was going to be at the movie theater, we had an open field there. And so when we come out of the movie theater, they were going to be the Block 16. So what had happened was Mas Kawako, he said, "Why don't you pick one person and we'll pick one, and you can have a fight instead?" In the meanwhile, the people that were Tule Lake, they came up to Minidoka when they closed. And a lot of them were from Sacramento and they were kind of zoot suiters. I think that, would remember that. And when they thought, and they became our friends. So went over to have this big rumble, they came to help us. But they came with bars and stuff, and when the Block 16 boys saw that, I don't think they wanted to fight us.

TI: Interesting.

VI: So it just kind of broke up.

TI: So your group kind of befriended the zoot suiters from Tule Lake. Which I want to now kind of cycle back, this is really, really interesting, the dynamics. I know when we were talking about this story in our family, and Tani was listening to all this, her eyes would get really big in terms of, oh, this is a great movie.

VI: [Laughs] You got the West Side Story, they're doing it now again. It was about the same thing.

TI: Yeah, exactly. And you could just see it, too, the tensions that happened.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.