Densho Digital Repository - Elliot Yoshinobu Horikoshi Interview (Densho ID: ddr-densho-1000-503-12)

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PW: But you're also coming of age during that civil rights period and then there's awakenings happening on college campuses everywhere, and then Vietnam War, I don't know. Did any of this affect you in your thinking, particularly about being Japanese American?

EH: No, I don't think so. The one thing I remember about living down there was I was there the day that President Kennedy was shot in Texas, because he was going to come to our post the next day. Because he was visiting the army bases, and so he was going to come to San Antonio the next day. So that whole week that we had been cleaning up our base. So they were cleaning the roads and the barracks and everything to make it look good for the President to come. And so we were really shocked when that happened. When I was living in the barracks, though, down there, see, I was the only Asian. At that time, I didn't notice those things. There were kids from all over the U.S. One of my friends was from Massachusetts and one was from Texas, one was from Washington, so all different. And a couple of Black kids, mostly Caucasian, though. But we all got along fine, so I don't know. But because some of the other guys in the barracks, there was other training, they were training other medical field people, so they were all, almost all of them were college educated, so that was, maybe that made some difference, and anti-racist... I never experienced anything, even when I was working in the local pharmacies, I never had any problems because of race.

PW: So when you finished your service, I believe that was '62 to '64, where did you go?

EH: Oh, so I came back home and then my parents were living in Florin, so I moved to Florin. Then I got a job at a local pharmacy, the chain called Thrifty's, I don't know if you... and then I worked for another company. I lived in, I got an apartment in Sacramento, which is near Florin, for a while. But then the company that I joined had an opening, they had another pharmacy in San Francisco that was looking for someone. I took that job, then I moved to San Francisco and worked there for a couple years.