<Begin Segment 7>

JF: So my grandfather feels like it's a good opportunity to buy this chicken ranch or egg farm, don't know what... I think it goes by both terms. And it cost thirty thousand dollars, which was a huge sum of money. So they had a down payment, and then for collateral they put up these thirty thousand dollars' worth of Tokyo Electric bonds that they have. So with that, they take over this farm, and then again, my...

BN: Where is this farm?

JF: Oh, the farm is in Artesia. And that area, Lakewood, Artesia, is mostly, at that time, it's mostly a dairy farming area. And most of those dairy farms were run by Dutch people. So they go from, like, a Mexican/Japanese neighborhood over to this Caucasian area dominated by these Dutch dairy farmers. And they go to a high school called Excelsior Union High School. Kind of small in comparison, especially Venice High School where they had transferred from. So my uncle Harvey is a freshman there, Nori enters as a junior, and my mom is a graduating senior there. Oh, no, she had graduated from Venice, so she didn't attend there. So it's just Harvey and Nori in that high school. And it's a lot different there because my uncle Nori, he doesn't take crap from anybody. And he had been befriended by this guy in Venice High School who was in charge of, kind of a club. Maybe in today's terms they'd view it as a gang, but it was a group of Mexican American guys who liked to lift weights, so that fit in with Nori's passion, and they liked to box and just liked to get into a fight. Even though they weren't looking for trouble and people left them alone, it would just kind of happen. And my uncle Nori told me the story of his initiation into that group where after they taught him how to box for a full summer, in order to become a full-fledged member of their club, he had to box somebody for real. So they wind up going down, the leader of the group, and he and two others, the four of them pile into a pickup truck. They go down to Venice and they're at this dive bar where the leader goes in and then comes back out and tells Nori, "Whoever comes out of that door next, you have to fight them. Just pick a fight with them. If you want to become one of us, then that's what you got to do." Comes to, like, six foot something, maybe sailor on leave, he probably just drunk himself into stupefaction, but he's able to walk out of there. And so Nori is instructed to go challenge the guy. And so he walks up to him and Nori tells him, "Give me all your money." And they guy takes a look at him and says, "You fucking Jap," and he starts this haymaker from like sidewalk level, it was telegraphed the whole way. Nori dodges them with a single punch. He floors this much larger hakujin navy sailor guy, and he's in the club. [Laughs]

BN: Was there a name for the club?

JF: He never told me. And he only told me this story -- I don't think anybody in the family really knew about it, now they do. Because I myself had gotten into some trouble, and so he was the one who picked me up from jail, and he's giving me a ride back out to his place at the time Nori lived with his family out in Anaheim. So that's quite a ways to go from L.A. County. And so on the way there, he's telling me a story, because he says, "I know what it feels to be the black sheep of the family." And I thought, "Am I the black sheep of the family now?" [Laughs] Gee, thanks. "Thanks, Uncle Nori, you make me feel better." And so he's telling me all these things, and there was a lot more that I don't even want to divulge. But it was like, you're kidding me. Anyway, that's Nori. On the other hand, Uncle Harvey, total opposite. So his experience in high school is he kind of tried to fit in. He cut his hair. Where Nori had, what do they call that? Top hat and fenders? Flat top and fenders? Anyway, it was kind of this duck tail thing going on. And Harvey wanted to fit in, so he had his mother cut his hair just before. There's a funny picture of him standing with his freshman class at Excelsior Union where he stands out because they had him standing in the front row. Even though everyone else was seated in neat little rows, Harvey is on the far right standing, and he looks like he's the Hulk, the Japanese Hulk, he's so built. He's just huge especially in comparison to all these Dutch farmer kids, all very short, slight. And then on the other end of the bleacher stands the homeroom teacher. It's kind of a funny picture because he was so big. But his hair, he kind of asked his mother to cut his hair so he could fit in with the Dutch boys who'd wear their hair slicked to the side and stuff. He didn't want to be like Nori exactly. Turns out later he winds up kind of being like Nori. But the two of them do well in sports, especially after Nori convinces Harvey to join the football team with him, and act as his blocking guard. And there's an article that I salvaged from the school newspaper there where it described the first game of the season where "Halfback Nori Kitaoka scored three touchdowns in the first half," and then it doesn't continue, but in the picture you could tell it was behind the blocking of this younger brother pulling guard, Harvey, who probably wiped out all of the linebackers coming after Nori. But they were really into athletics, sports.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.