<Begin Segment 11>

BN: Then, actually, I wanted to ask you about the term "Buddhahead" that you used. Was that what people called Japanese at that time?

NN: Well, actually, I used to hear my father's friends, all the Niseis, talk about Buddhahead. "Oh, that's a Buddhahead." And I just kind of, okay. And I think I liked that more than I liked the term "Oriental." And I think also that that's how we identified ourselves with, and even within the Blacks that were kind of like street hip. Like they called us Buddhaheads, and this was before there were Cripps and Bloods. So they were Bloods to us, "You Blood."

BN: Because I'm curious, because Buddhahead, for your parents' generation, was really a Hawaii thing. Was that still a connotation, or did it just, at that point, just mean any Japanese American?

NN: I think it was any JA.

BN: Yeah, at that point. Were there a lot of folks from Hawaii in Crenshaw at that time, or was it mostly...

NN: No.

BN: Not really, huh?

NN: And I think when the Hawaiians gravitated out here, it was mainly Gardena.

BN: Yeah, it was Gardena, then it's Culver, too. That's interesting, yeah. I'm curious how the evolution of that term... did anyone ever use the term "kotonk"?

NN: Very rarely. Yeah, very rarely. Probably because there wasn't a strong, like a Hawaiian enclave out here.

BN: I got that a lot. My parents and all extended family were from Hawaii, so I was the kotonk, the one kotonk as a kid. What about the term "boochie"? Did you ever hear that?

NN: Booty?

BN: Boochie.

NN: How do you spell that?

BN: B-O-O-C-H-I-E.

NN: I never heard of that.

BN: You never heard that, okay. That might have died off by then. That was probably before the war, during the war.

NN: What does that mean?

BN: It's another term for, it's like Buddhahead.

NN: Oh, boochie, no.

BN: There's a whole... and then you called the African Americans "Bloods."

NN: Yeah, "Hey, Blood." You don't do that no more. [Laughs]

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.