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BT: When... so do you recall anything after Maryknoll, after that time?

FS: Well, my dad, as I say, came as an artist, and I didn't realize, sort of the background of the mother. He didn't... I also didn't know that that he didn't know his father, because his father died before he was born. So this was only five years ago that I learned that type of a story. So he was raised by a single mother who happened to journey most of, all of Japan, from middle of Japan to Hokkaido to the southern tip of Kagoshima to Okinawa. Because my father's sister was placed in a boarding school in Naha later on. And the mother... well, there's something very substantial to his story, and then his choice to leave Japan only after his mother died, same year, and to come to (the U.S.) study art. So there was nothing more than that, and he didn't have a family here to receive him. So he had to deal with racism and everything by himself.

BT: When you started school, do you remember that time when you first started school?

FS: Only by pictures, I think. I don't have a picture of the school, but we lived in Boyle Heights and sort of worked our way from there to the west side, Olympic area, where it's now more Koreatown, that type of area. And we moved quite a bit because my dad... I think, well, as I said, because he studied, he came to study western art, he didn't deal with money, he didn't feel he needed money. So until he got married, and I was born, he didn't make the effort to work like most people did. And it was, you know, we moved quite a few times. So my only recollection is that, from various schools, and from one school to another, so I didn't really have permanent friends in school. And then as we went to final, before camp, was Hobart Boulevard. So I remember that school because I was a little bit older, I was about seven or eight.

BT: So since you, it sounds like you moved school often, and it was difficult for you to make permanent, long-term friendships with students and so forth, so how did you use your time? What did you do to occupy your time? I mean, it's not like you went next door to play sports with your neighbor or those kind of things?

FS: Well, I did learn, I did learn early on how to make friends, short-term friends. So I had, well, of course, when I was very young, five or six, it probably didn't matter a whole lot because I had my parents. But I think the, as I went to different schools, I always had some friends. I went to Japanese school as well, so I had... that was constant. I mean, not for a long time, but anyway... so I had a few family friends that I grew up with. And yeah, it was that kind of thing. It was just a few family friends that I was very close to.

BT: What Japanese school did you go to?

FS: Daini Gakuen.

BT: Daini?

FS: Yeah, Daini Gakuen.

BT: Do you remember where that was?

FS: Yeah, right near Hobart, I believe. Hobart or Harvard, one of those. Because my dad couldn't drive. See, we didn't have a car. That's the other thing, we always took the streetcar. My dad had an accident about the time he got married. He always had a car when he came so that he can travel and photograph, but he had an accident, he never told me about it, he had a fairly strong limp. When he came as a youngster before he got married, he played a lot of tennis. Well, he played tennis in Japan as well, so he had a tennis racquet when he was, like, three years old, we have photographs of that. So his love was for sports and art.

BT: Did you play tennis at school through junior high, high school?

FS: Who?

BT: You.

FS: [Laughs] Yeah, I played quite a bit of tennis. Actually, the journey where we ended up at Westridge, there was a tennis court there. My dad taught me tennis, and he had a limp, but he knew how to teach me, and I played quite a bit, and then I integrated the Valley Hunt Club up the street, because it was kind of an elitist club. And I was able to learn tennis on that court, too.

BT: Tell us how you got to Pasadena, to Westridge, from Los Angeles. How did that happen?

FS: Not from Los Angeles to Westridge, but it came from after camp.

BT: After camp, okay, right, right.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.