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BN: Now, Crenshaw, in addition to having a large Japanese American community, a lot of Sansei kids, was also an African community. What was the relationship or interaction between the groups as you saw as a kid growing up there?

NN: They were normal. They were classmates, they were neighbors, they were friends, and even though we, more or less, parted ways after school, they had their activities and their community things. And the JA community was so self-contained that we had our things going on, they very rarely converged where we would have, like a mass party, big block party or anything like that. That's kind of too bad, but overall, I think the racial bullshit was very at a minimum between Japanese Americans and the African Americans at the time.

BN: In your schools, going to Dorsey, what was the -- from your perspective -- what was the approximate demographic or ratios?

NN: I say, like I graduated in '66. And I would say it was something like maybe sixty percent or seventy percent Black, maybe about thirty or twenty-five percent Japanese American, and we had some white students over there, which was in the minority in terms of, like, the Latinx, probably I could count 'em on one hand.

BN: You're also growing up at a time when all this stuff is happening in the outside world. The Civil Rights Movement is going on, Martin Luther King, all of this stuff is going on. The Watts Rebellion takes place when you're in high school. How does that impact you, or does it, as you're growing up?

NN: Growing up didn't, unfortunately, it was kind of idyllic where, at the time and place where I was at, that we all got along. We all got along, and I probably, if there would have been something like an awakening, it would have probably been some type of Black classmates demanding, like, a Black student union or Black Studies, or naturals, like "Black is Beautiful." Because Blacks have always been on the forefront of the human rights, Civil Rights Movement. But that wasn't happening in our community. And things that were significant things that were going on, it was almost like it didn't affect us, because it was almost like living in this self-contained bubble. I mean, anyway, that's how I saw it.

BN: Even Watts, because that's not that far away?

NN: Yeah, Watts was a little different. Yeah, Watts was a little different, you know, "Burn, baby, burn," and to see all that going on within the city, and everybody's concerne, and I guess there was a concern about the JA businesses that flourished on the avenues, Jefferson Boulevard. And I guess.. I don't guess, but because of the ethnic relationships that Black and yellow had, that not one of those businesses, mom and pop stores or gas stations or anything, was touched. And a lot of the protectors were Black neighbors. And you know, you go a few miles this way, a few miles that way, places were torched.

BN: So it really was a bubble, as you put it. I know watching, Janice Tanaka made a film called "When You're Smiling," it's largely set in that area. When you were coming up, were drugs a thing with that? Something that was taking place when you were there or was that something that became a bigger thing later?

NN: That became really a bigger thing later, but it was still prevalent when I was growing up. And I guess the drugs that were being available within the... it was like downers, barbiturates, and I guess they called them reds, they were manufactured mainly by Eli Lilly. And I guess they manufactured so many of them that they hit the street market, the overabundance, the overflow. So that's what ended up in my hands during that time.

BN: Was it pretty prevalent in your school?

NN: If you wanted it, you got it. But back then, like I said, there's only, not a lot of people wanted it.

BN: But later on, it becomes a bigger...

NN: Oh, yeah, it became like an epidemic.

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