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BN: So you're, what, seven-ish, somewhere around there. So what school did you end up at?

NN: I went to Coliseum Street school, from there I went to Audubon junior high school. They called it junior high then, not middle school, because I think we started a year later and then ended up, I went to Dorsey High School.

BN: What kind of student were you?

NN: Bad.

BN: Even from elementary?

NN: Yeah. I don't remember too much about learning too much in elementary school. I knew how to read and write my name, and then whatever that did to math and all that, I was able to do that. So I wasn't like a dummy, but didn't have too much interest to me, what they were programming me to do. [Laughs]

BN: So given that, what were you interested in?

NN: You know, start off that in Chicago, in Chicago when my first day in kindergarten, like I said, I was finally confined to this back room with my older brother growing up, and probably went, he went to school, that it was just me and my mom in that back room. So I'm not used to being socialized or anything. So when my first -- and I don't even know what's going on, whatever -- and then my first day in school, I guess what happened with my brother Patrick, that when my mom went to take him to elementary school in Chicago, that the school that she took him to was, she said it was kind of out of control. I guess the kids were bad, like smoking, gambling and all this other stuff, right, so she ended up sending him to a parochial school, a Catholic school. And we weren't Catholic, but that's like a bitter choice. So that's where I ended up, at a parochial school, you got to wear this uniform and they've got these teachers looking like penguins, the nuns. So I never saw a nun before, and they're telling you what to do. And then I don't know how much of an impact it was, but, I mean, me and my brother were the only Asians in the whole school. And I guess I noticed that, I noticed that. And the first day in school, that they kind of instruct you like if you got to go pee pee you raise up one finger, if you got to do number two, you raise two fingers, and come about before the bell rang, I mean, I had to go bad. [Laughs] And then all I remember is a nun told me to put my hand down. I could only hold it so long, and then I remember I peed in my pants the first day of school. And from that day on, I didn't like school. I didn't like school.

And then also at this parochial school, that I guess it's a little bit different in Chicago, that there were very, no supervision at lunchtime, no supervision at lunchtime. And then depending upon what room you were in, that when you kind of go out to the yard, that the other kids will kind of, "What room were you in?" And it's almost like Bloods and Cripps kind of shit, right? You end up getting in fights or getting hit and all that. I know nothing about all this kind of stuff, because I was locked in my room all this time. So just trying to get through the day, kind of thing. But I survived, but I didn't really, if I had my choice, I wouldn't have gone.

And then Hanford was pretty rough, too, because it was all these country guys. But I had a bunch of cousins there, it was a little bit of a buffer there. But still, I wasn't thrilled about being there. But I went to the first day at Coliseum Street School, they had all these friendly Asian kids that looked like me, and I felt like I was, I'm in Disneyland. And at lunchtime, they had games, they had balls, playing four square or tetherball, so, I mean, it was like, hey, this is okay. So I guess I liked recess. But to get to your question, I was looking at my... my mom saved all my documents and my report cards, and so I was looking at all my report cards from junior high to high school. And then looking at it, and I never got an A. I mean, in P.E. I got an A, in P.E. I got all that other stuff, I mean, it was like, damn. Either I didn't give a shit, or I didn't give a shit, yeah. It was kind of funny, too, because my older brother, he was everything that you would want your son to be. So he was straight-As, student body officer, he ran track, lettered in track, participated in student government. So that's my older brother Patrick, and I was kind of carefree. And since being three years apart, whenever he would graduate, I would start. So I guess when the teachers would call out roll, they'd get to my name, "Nagatani?" "Here." "Oh, are you Patrick's brother?" "Yes," and they would smile. And then usually like within a few weeks, "Are you sure you're Patrick's brother?" [Laughs] So we were like yin-yang kind of thing.

BN: Did you get along, though?

NN: Later on in life we really got along. But, you know, I'm a few years younger. We shared the same room. We shared the same room all the way until we got to college, so it's kind of like we were cellmates, right? And he was too busy succeeding, and I was too busy having fun, so we never really connected growing up.

BN: How did he influence you in the sense that you tell the story about all, presumably there are these expectations that he sort of set for you?

NN: I think there were community standards. Yeah, community standards, like I never bought into it. And I don't know if consciously I was rebelling and whatnot, and I guess sometimes when I think about it, say if like I would have known the camp story or the incarceration and struggles that my grandparents went through for me to be here now and to give me a little bit of a grounding thing, whether or not that would have influenced me to a point where I would have looked at things different and made some different choices. That at that time, I'm really not sure. I would like to say, yeah, you know what? If I would have known about where I fit into, like, our whole history and journey, but part of me says I would have maybe still did what I did, but I would have been more knowledgeable.

BN: That was actually going to be my next question, was, so you didn't know about your parents' camp, the other story at that point?

NN: No.

BN: Did they mention camp at all, even in like a positive contact like many Niseis would do?

NN: No.

BN: So had never even, if someone had said "Manzanar," you wouldn't have even know what that was at that time?

NN: No, I wouldn't have known. But then I wasn't a lone ranger. It was pretty much straight across the Sansei population.

BN: Were most of your friends also Sansei?

NN: Yes.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.