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BN: So you mentioned competitions. How did that work? What did you do?

DA: Well, the drum and bugle corps, back in the... and I think they still do it today, they have competitions. You, either through, just like the Rose Bowl, for example, the troop marched in the Rose Bowl parade. That's not a competition, but there were parades back then and some of those parades, other drum and bugle corps were invited, and there would be a competition, meaning, so you would play two or three songs in front of this stand, and so some were that, just musical ability, some had to do with how, your marching ability, do formations and whatnot. And that was the most, I think what most of the competitions were. You'd go out into the football field and play about fifteen minutes' worth of marching around doing these different formations and playing different songs, and you'd be graded on it. So there was Maryknoll back there and they had a troop, they had a drum and bugle corps, we did, Chinatown had one, East Los Angeles had one, and some of that East Los Angeles one was co-ed. Ours wasn't. We didn't really have any women 'til much, much later when we added a color guard, and the color guard are the ones that carried around the flags, they don't play any instruments. But yeah, so I had left by then, but yeah, so we would practice at a high school called Jackson, Jackson High School in East Los Angeles, and it was a high school for the guys, I guess, that were getting kicked out of other high schools. [Laughs] I don't know why that's important. We'd be on that field at least two times a week when there was competitions, and we'd practice in their gym as well. And if it was raining outside, we'd practice inside. It was, I don't know who designed those marching things, but it took a while to memorize all that stuff. March out ten feet, turn this way, march. And you don't really know what it looks like 'til one year I think somebody finally filmed it, and going, "Oh, wow, is that what it looks like? That's kind of nice." So, I mean, you would watch other marching bands do their thing, but all their things are much different than ours so you didn't know what your own looked like.

BN: Yeah, from the ground level, I guess, it looks very different from...

DA: Sure. And all you're concerned about is you're divided into three guys normally. So you're pivoting around, you're moving around, and so is everybody else. But you know, you could see what everyone else is doing, but you don't know what it looks like from the stands.

BN: Right.

DA: We went to a couple, later on, there was Nationals. We never made it to Nationals. But there were things like that where you would compete, and if you won, then you'd go to the next level and then you'd get to State. And if you win the State, then you go to Nationals. We got to State one year, but we never got to Nationals. But we were invited, and I remember going to one, and it's pretty crazy. Pretty impressive what some of these organizations can do and how good they are. Some of these players, they were incredible. So you're going, oh, this is the cream of the crop. Plus, you know, we're a Boy Scout troop, right? We have to take whoever we have. Whereas a lot of these other organizations, you had to try out. And plus, you had to be a certain height for a lot of these. You know, ours was like this. [Pantomimes people of different heights]. You line up, right? Some of them, like the more professional ones like the Air Force or something like that, they were all same height, within an inch or two, and they all look great because their belt lines are all the same, it looks better.

BN: Right, right. You had a, more a handicap.

DA: Yeah, a little bit. But that's not supposed to count, but aesthetically, it's hard to compete against something like that. But we would never be going against that kind of competition anyway. They had flights, so to speak, categories, so we were more like a community type.

BN: This might be a dumb question, but I was not a Boy Scout, so I don't know much about this. Because Boy Scouts were, at some level, are they not Christian based organizations? Isn't there a religious component?

DA: Actually not.

BN: No? Because this is affiliated with a Buddhist temple.

DA: I know, right. Now I know that other troops did, but ours didn't. And yeah, there's the Scout Law and the things that we were, part of that was trying to be reverent, right? And so I can see where it could be a lot of Christian values in it, but I don't know, I never looked at it that way. Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. Those are the twelve rules of the Scouts. That's kind of how I was indoctrinated. And I did achieve Eagle Scout by force of my mom. [Laughs] "You've got to set an example for your two brothers." "Okay." That was her mantra.

BN: It gets you a picture in the Rafu Shimpo and stuff, too.

DA: Gets me into... yeah. Anyways, got to set a good example for your younger sister and brothers. "Okay, Mom." That kept me on pretty much the straight and narrow for a while. [Laughs]

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