Densho Digital Repository - Nick Nagatani Interview I

Densho Digital Repository
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Nick Nagatani Interview I
Narrator: Nick Nagatani
Interviewer: Brian Niiya
Location: Culver City, California
Date: May 9, 2023
Densho ID: ddr-densho-1000-535

<Begin Segment 1>

BN: Okay, so it's May 9, 2023. I get the day right, I often get the year wrong. And we're at the home of Nick Nagatani in Culver City. My name is Brian Niiya and I'll be doing the interview, and Yuka -- I forgot your last name, sorry -- Murakami will be doing the videography. Off to a good start. So anyway, yeah, let's start, as we often do, with your parents. So I wanted to start by asking you a bit about your dad and just what you know about his early life and taking us into his wartime camp experience.

NN: Let's see. My father, he's the third son of my paternal grandparents, Ryoichi and Ayame Nagatani.

[Interruption]

BN: Can you start with what his name was?

NN: My father's name was Lee John Shuzo Nagatani, and the reason why he has Lee John, because he was born on the birth certificate as Lee, and as a young infant, I guess he had pneumonia or some type of, like, serious birth disease or illness, and fortunately, he passed through that. And my baachan, her name was Ayame, that she said that, "Lee's not a good name," so she renamed him John. So he always was John Lee, but on his birth certificate, it's Lee. His Japanese name is Shuzo and he's the third son of my paternal grandparents Ayame and Ryoichi Nagatani. And they were sharecroppers in Central Cal. And in terms of their standard of living at the time, that I would say that they were below poverty level in the sense that the home that my father grew up in, they were sharecroppers. I guess they worked hard enough to impress one of the local growers in the current county, in the King County, like Central California area, where they gave him an area where I think it was some type of tree growth, they cleared it out to set up a home. And inside this home, there was no running water or electricity, and the outside bathing area consisted of, like, a fire pit with a big tub where they'd warm up the water. I guess my father being the last, he liked to be the last to get into the tub. But anyway, that's kind of like my dad's upbringing. He was a good athlete, in high school he was voted the outstanding athlete of his class. He was a very, very hard worker, and I think like all my uncles and my pop and my jiichan, they would pick in the summertime, whatever seasonal pickers, and I think my dad was such a good worker that I think at the age of twelve, that my baachan would tell my grandfather that, "What are doing giving him cigarettes? He's twelve years old." And my jiichan's attitude was, well, "He works like a man so he could smoke."

My grandmother, she was a mail order bride. It was arranged, and it was like one of those situations where she was unaware of how old my jiichan was, because I think he was in his thirties, and she was in her early teens, but it worked out. I never got to meet my jiichan because they were relocated, they were incarcerated in Jerome, Arkansas. And when he was in camp he had some type of, sounds like a stomach attack, appendicitis or whatever it was, and he passed in camp. I think my father, at that time, was living in Chicago because he took the, I'm going to use the word "advantage," of the program that they were releasing the prisoners to contribute to the American war workforce. So as long as you have a sponsor and you have to work back east, so he found employment back east, so he went back to his father's service at that time. When finally, my parents didn't talk too much about their camp experience, which is not unusual for Niseis to talk about it to our generation, but when I was able to talk to him about certain things, I asked him, "Do you think your dad would have, didn't have to die, if he had adequate medical attention, service?" And he said, "Yes." So anyway, my father met my mom --

BN: Before we get there, I want to just go back a little bit. What high school did he graduate from?

NN: He graduated from Hanford High School.

BN: His two older brothers as well?

NN: Yes.

BN: Then what happened to them in camp? Did they also leave early?

NN: You know, they stayed with the family, and my uncle Ray is the middle son, and my uncle Roy, who's like the chonan, that they stayed with the family. I think my pop was the only one that went back east to work.

BN: Then what happened to the family home or farm after they went to camp?

NN: Well, they really didn't own anything.

BN: Right, sure.

NN: Yeah, they didn't own anything, but after camp, they went back to the same area and they settled in Hanford, California, and it was my baachan, I think the street was something like Ninth Ave or so, and it's more built up now where it's like of like a town city. But back in the '50s or the '40s when they were settled, I'd say it was more like a five light, stoplight kind of little town. And my grandmother lived on Ninth Ave and my uncle Roy lived right next to her, and my uncle Ray lived across the street. So they were still like a family unit.

BN: And then they farmed also after the war?

NN: No, no. My uncle Roy, the oldest son, became a butcher, and my uncle Ray, he eventually opened up like Ace Motors, like a little car shop, motor repair thing.

BN: And I know we'll come back to them in a little bit, because you stay with them later, right? But we'll get to that. One other thing I wanted to ask about your dad is, I thought was interesting, you may not even know this, but when people, when the Japanese Americans first went to camp, there was a census form called Form 26 that they had to fill out. It was largely for occupational purposes, but for your dad, it listed as potential occupations, athlete, sports instructors and sports officials, and secondly musicians and teachers and music. So you talked a little bit about him being an athlete, but was he also coaching or doing any of that, and then I was also curious about the music thing.

NN: [Laughs] That's new to me. I heard him whistle a couple times. I don't think he played an instrument.

BN: Interesting.

NN: But he liked to listen to music. I mean, he had, I think at that the time, he had a collection of Herb Alpert, the trumpet...

BN: Yeah, right.

NN: And I didn't know about athlete instructor like a coach. I actually thought it was something like carpentry. That's good to know.

BN: He must have told them he could do those things.

NN: But you know what, he would have been, in my opinion, a lousy coach. Because he was a perfectionist, and I guess because of his upbringing, he would expect you to be focused and locked in, and most of us aren't that way. Of course the few times he tried to coach me, it didn't work out well. [Laughs]

BN: We will get to that later, too, as, of course, you became a coach.

<Begin Segment 2>

BN: So anyway, okay. So your dad is now, has resettled in Chicago. What was he doing as an occupation in Chicago that brought him out there?

NN: He, as far as I know, that he was employed for a... I wouldn't call it a tool designing office or factory or whatever, and I've seen like, he bought one of those, what is it, like an 8-mm camera for use in Chicago, so he was taking pictures of his work and friend, people that he knew. And there were a lot of Niseis working there at this shop. And I remember that as a kid, I used to see like a set of books, and it was all, like, volume one, volume two, all the way to maybe volume twenty, and they were like paperback books with instructive kind of stuff. He learned, he was self-taught to be like a draftsman, a tool designer draftsman, so I think that was like if you had to give a title to what he did, eventually he became like a draftsman.

BN: Okay. And then you were mentioning that he met your mom there, but to back up, can you now talk about your mom and how she ended up in Chicago?

NN: Okay. My mother's father was...

BN: And then what her name was.

NN: Oh, it was Yoshiye Nagatani, and she christened, she gave herself the name Diane when she had to leave camp and go to Chicago, you know, to have an Anglicized name.

BN: And then Nagatani was her married name.

NN: Oh, I'm sorry, it was Yoshimura.

BN: Yoshimura.

NN: And I guess her friends called her "Yo-Yo," I think. She was raised by her father, Kichigaro, and she had two brothers, she was the youngest, and they were uncle Jimmy and uncle Joe. And the family resided in Boyle Heights, California, my mother was a graduate from Roosevelt High School. She was talented and liked the theater, she won some type of, like, Shakespeare contest in high school that she was actually on the radio for this, I guess it was a citywide contest and she won the contest. She was offered a scholarship, I think, to UCLA. At the time that her, my grandfather, he didn't want her to go. And I guess if anyone should have gone to college, it should have been like the older brother, my uncle Jimmy. So what can you say, like my mom just kind of went along with it, but...

BN: But the implication being because she was a girl.

NN: Yes. And I guess not the oldest or whatever. Her upbringing was, it was rough in a way where she was raised without a mom. And I guess having two brothers that were pretty much protective of her, that she would remember incidents where things like, she would wear a nice dress to school, and I guess some of her friends would go home and tell, "Oh, Yoshiye came, she looked real pretty today, she had a nice dress on." And I guess the response would be, "Well, that's because she don't have a mother." So little things like little digs here and there. My jiichan was, I never really had a relationship with him, because after the war, he went to Japan to reside, I met him a couple times. But my understanding was he was very old school, pro-Japanese, in fact, I think he may have been a member of one of those Dragon Societies in Manzanar, and he would be the kind of man that, say, at a New Year's party or wedding when they give the open mic, he'd be up there singing. And I probably, like he didn't take too much caca. So I guess my mom shared a story with me that when she was a kid, that I guess one of the neighbors had a car, and they would get all the neighborhood kids, pick 'em up and take 'em to the beach. I don't know how my mom, old she was, I would imagine like grade school or whatever. So she's waiting to get picked up, and she has her swimsuit on and her towel, beach towel. And she was waiting, waiting, waiting, and no one came. When her dad came home, when jiichan came home, he thought she was going to the beach, and my mom just saying, "Well, no one came to pick me up." So he got so angry that he went out and got a car to take them to the beach, kind of thing. He was a veteran of the Japan-Russian War, and he was a part of a veterans group that I guess would get together and reminisce and celebrate in Little Tokyo, which was probably the reason why, on December 8th, he was identified and sent to New Mexico in a prison.

<Begin Segment 3>

BN: So can you tell me again about what your dad did for a living?

NN: My jiichan? Oh, my father?

BN: Your mother's father.

NN: Okay. They owned a... he owned a, I guess a little open market stall in the, I guess it was like the Boyle Heights community where I guess they had produce and vegetables and different other grocery items. And this is where my uncle, Uncle Jimmy and Uncle Joe, and my mom would help out at the store. And other than that, I'm not sure.

BN: This would be a retail produce store, right?

NN: Yes.

BN: There was a very, very popular occupation, lot of Japanese have those. Then you mentioned that, probably because of his veteran, Russo-Japanese veterans activities and so on, he's arrested and interned separately, so that leaves the two brothers and your mom, so where do they go?

NN: They were imprisoned in Manzanar, and the oldest son, my uncle Jimmy, he went on a letter writing campaign and wrote letters to the powers to be to the government about requesting that their dad, my jiichan, be able to come to the family because he didn't do anything wrong. The government actually released my grandfather, so he rejoined the family in Manzanar. I don't know what lapse of time occurred, but he was able to come back and be with the family. But like I said, his sentiments was always pro-Japan.

BN: And then your mom subsequently leaves Manzanar?

NN: Right.

BN: And kind of similarly with your dad.

NN: Yes. So she migrated to Chicago, and I guess she had some type of secretarial job there in the, I guess the Chicago Young Niseis. I guess there was some kind of restriction that were placed on them that you can't really congregate, you can't have more than, like, four of us together at one time. It was kind of like, forget that, so they had dances and tried to make a quality of life for themselves. So they met, my father and my mother, they actually met on a blind date that, I guess didn't at first turn out well because my father actually thought that his date was this other girl that was with my mom, so he couldn't understand why my mom kept talking to him when he thought the date was the other girl. So I guess my mom's first reaction is, "What's wrong with this guy?" So I guess when he finally figured it out, got straightened out that it was my mom that he was supposed to be seeing, that I guess he liked her because he called her up and apologized, and the rest is history. [Laughs]

BN: So they get married in Chicago, right?

NN: Yes.

BN: About how long of an interval, do you know, between?

NN: I think it was pretty quick.

BN: Yeah.

NN: Yeah, because my older brother was born in 1945. He was born in 1945, so it's probably like, let's do it.

BN: That's what you did in those days. And then when were you born?

NN: 1948.

<Begin Segment 4>

BN: And then do you have memories -- I know you left when you left when you were fairly young -- but do you have memories of Chicago as a young child?

NN: Yes. I remember it was cold, I remember the snow, I remember going to school for the first time. I somewhat remember having cousins, I remember the location where we lived and basically all my memories consisted of, like, my family unit, and I say that because where we lived was in an industrial area. There were some railroad tracks, I guess some industrial buildings around there, and there was a radio station, and I forget the initials, but it was a Polish music station. Because I think there was a lot of Polish people living in Chicago, and this radio station was owned by a Congressman named Congressman Hoffman, and maybe he put some feelers out, or like an ad that he's looking for, some custodians to maintain his radio station. And this is where I grew up, the first five years, I think. It basically was like, it was a pretty big radio station, and we had this back area room, and I guess it must have been furnished, it had a toilet and a kitchen area and a living room. I think we had a bunkbed for me and my brother, Patrick. There were no other kids around. There were no other kids around during the day because it was like a radio station. We really couldn't get out of the room because they were doing a good job. So I guess me and my brother would just be in this room playing whatever, and when evening came, that my parents would buff the floor, they would take out, take out all the trash and do what they needed to do to do their maintenance work. But that way they were able to save up money, so eventually we could move back to California. I think that may have been their plan all along, I'm not sure.

BN: Could you actually hear the radio broadcasting?

NN: No. I guess they had these rooms, soundproof.

BN: Do you remember the address?

NN: It was on Kedzie, Kedzie Avenue, and when I went back to Chicago years ago, I went back to the radio station just to jog my memory. And today, it's a soul station called WVON.

BN: Still a radio station.

NN: Yeah, yeah, more R&B now.

<Begin Segment 5>

BN: And then how old were you when the family did go back to California?

NN: I was... let's see. I was to enter the first grade, so I guess that would make me about six or seven.

BN: You entered the first grade in California?

NN: Yes.

BN: And then before coming to L.A., you said they spent a year in Hanford?

NN: Oh, right.

BN: So you went to first grade there?

NN: Yes, out in the country. And I guess what happened was that my pop, he received an offer to work in the defense industry in Los Angeles, so I guess the El Segundo area where they have Lockheed and Garrett and all of that. So he worked for a company for, I think, called Garrett Air Research, and before we could actually set up residency in L.A., I guess he wanted to get things established, like his work, job and whatnot. So when we came from Chicago to California, and we drove across, and we went straight to Hanford to stay with my grandma. So my dad would, during the week, he would work in L.A., and at that time, he stayed with some of his Nisei buddies in an apartment, and on the weekends he would drive back to Central Cal to be with family. So again, he did this commute for like a year, and maybe half a year, I'm not sure. But I remember I went to school in Hanford, California. And then he was able to purchase a house out here in Crenshaw area, Seinan area. So that's where we moved to, and Hanford was nice because next door to my baachan's house where we lived, my uncle Roy, he had two kids, my cousin Denny and my cousin Jerry, and across the street, Uncle Ray had three boys. So there were seven Nagatani boys, but no girls. And my younger brother eventually was born in Hanford, so there'd be eight of us.

BN: All boys?

NN: All boys.

BN: What was the age range?

NN: Let's see. The oldest was Mike, who was a year older than Patrick, so that he was four years my elder, my brother was three years, my cousin Tony, he was like two years my elder, then I'm right there, and my cousin David's a year younger than me, and my cousin Gerry is a year younger than David.

BN: So you're all... but then you left that after not too long.

NN: Yes. But during the year, we'd always go back for, they had a picnic, Hanford picnic, because there's a pretty big JA community there.

BN: In Hanford?

NN: Yes. Or that area. So we'd have like a JA picnic that we went to every year, and we'd go back there for New Year's, special occasions. So I knew my cousins and my baachan.

BN: Were your parents active in, kind of, community organizations or their churches or kenjinkai or anything like that?

NN: In Hanford?

BN: Well, in either place, or in any of the places they lived?

NN: No.

BN: Or JACL or anything like that?

NN: No. My pop didn't join anything. The one year ago, I guess I was playing in the JA Japanese American Athletic Leagues, and I was, the organization that I was part of was like the Tiger organization, so I guess he felt that he should contribute, so he became president of the Tigers for one year. It was only until after my baachan passed away that they became temple members at Senshin. My mother, who is very, very social, I think it was like a, if it was up to her, she would have probably been starring at East West. She liked to perform, but I think all that was pretty suppressed, because my dad, my father, as far as he was concerned, that there was no one but my mom. And I guess that could be kind of suffocating at times.

BN: So did she work outside the home while you guys were growing up?

NN: You know, he wanted her to be at home at the time, but when we, I guess, finally when Scott, my younger brother, graduated high school, like mission accomplished, so she went and worked as an office manager for L.A. Unified.

BN: This is quite a few years later.

NN: Yes.

BN: And then you said your dad had gotten this job with Garrett, you said?

NN: Yes.

BN: So is that what he did, pretty much, in L.A. when you were growing up?

NN: Uh-huh.

BN: Was he still doing the draftsmen type work?

NN: Yeah, I think he called it, like, being a tool designer.

BN: Okay.

NN: And they would design tools for the aerospace.

BN: Sure. And he worked, he commuted to El Segundo from Crenshaw?

NN: Yes.

BN: And did you have family also in L.A. at that time?

NN: No.

BN: So you're kind of down here, just your family? But even then, right, Crenshaw has a large Japanese community.

NN: Huge.

BN: Is that part of the reason, I assume that had something to do with them choosing to live there?

NN: From what I know, is I think the first place my father, my pop, looked into for our residence was Westchester. But because of the redlining and the covenants, residential covenants, that we ended up in Crenshaw, which is the same for just about everybody, Crenshaw/Boyle Heights.

BN: Gardena.

NN: Gardena was even later.

BN: Because Westchester would have been more convenient for him work-wise.

NN: Yes.

<Begin Segment 6>

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.

<Begin Segment 7>

BN: And then you mentioned that school wasn't interesting to you. What kinds of things did you find interesting or exciting? I know you mentioned sports as one thing, but can you talk about that what things you did find interesting or exciting?

NN: I liked sports. I think it kept me from getting in too much trouble, because you have to be kind of in shape to participate. Growing up, I didn't have really like a... I didn't have a direction that I was more interested in the moment than interested in what I'm going to be doing for the rest of my life. And I more or less gravitated to people that felt the same way, and there were probably more than a few of us. I liked excitement in terms of you were trying new things. Because if someone says, "Don't do that," wanted to see why not, kind of thing. I kind of lived for the weekend where probably as I became, got to high school age, that there was like a dance or a party happening every weekend, which took up my weekends. School was cool because it was kind of like a gathering place. And I think at that time that for a lot of... I shouldn't say a lot, but for some of us, there was a real strong machismo type of, searching for some type of strong identity, which without any type of guidance, I should say, that you could go down different paths, and not all the paths were productive.

BN: What was your parents' reaction, having your older brother being this ideal kid, and then here you are rebelling in some ways and so forth? How did they deal with that?

NN: You know, when I thought about it later on my life, for my father, because of his background, that I don't think that he had, like, the capability of understanding about, "What's wrong with that boy?" And then nor did he really have the, maybe the time and energy that... and I guess if it wasn't life-endangering or to a point where I'm shaming the family, that it was, "Maybe he'll grow out of it." And raising the kids was really my mom's job, because she was at home to raise us, because he was bringing home the bacon. But a few times, she'd always say, "Well, wait 'til your father gets home," then I mean, "Oh, shit." But to their credit, or to his credit, he never laid a hand on me. Maybe he should have, you know. [Laughs] Genkotsu, wake up call. And then my mom, like her love was unconditional. So basically I could just tell her anything and she'd want to believe me. Mothers are like that.

<Begin Segment 8>

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.

<Begin Segment 9>

BN: So you said you graduated in '66, and then what happens after that?

NN: Since I wasn't doing well, since I didn't do well in school, I guess it was time for a new chapter of my life that my father gave me a choice of going in the army, get a job, or you go to school. And if you go to school, you ain't going to school over here, you got to go to live with Grandma and go to school at College of the Sequoias in Visalia. So I thought about it, and I felt like working. I wouldn't go into the army, so I went to live with my Baachan and go to school at junior college, College of the Sequoias.

BN: And how did that go?

NN: Really well. For the first time, there wasn't too much to do out there except get healthy, fresh air, and my grandma's looking after me and feeding me.

BN: Were your cousins still out there?

NN: Just my cousin David, he's like a year younger. And he's the only one of the Nagatani boys that actually stayed at Hanford. And David was, he could have been the mayor of Hanford, really cool guy. Nice car, could kick ass if he needed to. Everybody got along with him. So anyway, just, David was there. So when I was living in Hanford for the first year that I applied myself, I excelled in school. So I was getting As and made the President's List, and I made the... let's see, the junior college basketball team. So I was doing very well. And so I did that for a year and got a whole bunch of college credits, which really helped me out later in life. I was close to getting an AA over there, then I'd come back in the summertime, kind of like everything was, gradually I'd kind of fall back into my old routine. And I went back for my second year and I stayed there, I lasted one semester. I guess as soon as the basketball season ended, that I came home then enrolled in LACC, and didn't do well over there. I mean, I didn't go to class, started hanging with my homies again. I mean, it wasn't all them, it was all me, but just didn't have the fortitude or the strength to think independently.

BN: And so this would have been '66-'67, so '67-'68, you're back in L.A. And then from there, you end up...

NN: Like from there, it wasn't even about school. School was like an afterthought, but now, I'm nineteen, or whatever, or enough like, people now were figuring out what they're going to do with the rest of your life. I'm still wanting to have fun, looking for excitement, and not finding it. Doing things that are deadbeat, kind of living this lifestyle, we're staying pretty high most of the day, still looking for the parties. And I guess it got to a point where I pretty much, just not coherent to reality, I have my own separate reality. And I ended up a day where four of us were, started the day off at one of my friends' house, and he was going to the recruiting station, because I think he had some type of issue he was trying to get out of. And the other three of us said, "You know what? We'll tag along and we'll go." And then we all went in there, stumbling in there in a drug-induced stupor, or stupid. And a couple hours later, we were Marines. A day in the life, yeah. So that was a life-changer. So a lot of significant things in my life, just was not planned or spontaneous.

BN: So you just went in and came out a Marine?

NN: [Laughs] Had no idea that morning that I'm going to end up a Marine, and I did.

BN: What was your draft status at that point?

NN: I don't even know. You know what? I may have still been enrolled at LACC.

BN: Oh, okay, so you were exempt. So you didn't know if you were, where you were in terms of the lottery?

NN: No. In fact, they didn't even have a lottery then at that time. In fact, back then, it was still volunteer.

BN: Okay.

NN: It was still volunteer. The draft was not instituted yet.

<Begin Segment 10>

BN: Before we get to Vietnam and the service, wanted to go back and ask you one more thing about high school. In your book, Buddhahead Trilogy, you write a lot about the gang scene in the area in high school. And I just wanted you to talk a little bit about that, what was going on there.

NN: At the time that, if you're from the Crenshaw-Seinan area, which was actually the postwar hub of the Japanese American community there, nationwide, that you were considered to be on the west side if you're from the Boyle Heights area, which was the congregation of, like, Japanese American postwar, that you're considered an east sider. So there was always friction between east side and west side, Buddhaheads, and as a result, I guess once upon a time they would be like clubs, but they turned into gangs from each area that was formed. They would oftentimes have fights and stuff at dances or parties or other community venues. And so you took pride in being from the west side or the east side.

[Interruption]

NN: Culturally, the west side, we were influenced, or a lot of our mannerisms, dress or taste and all that, was Black. And on the east side, it was more Latinx, like Sir Guy shirts and khaki pants. So there was a difference between east sider and west sider. Unfortunately, there was never anything to bring us together as being Buddhaheads. That would come later, but during that time, like gangs formed from each side of town. The difference back then, and I think it's not only with the Asians, but also straight across also with Blacks and the browns. Back then, they call it "going from the shoulders," but there was none of this kind of stuff. Every now and then maybe someone would get stabbed, and that was like, horror, but you fought. And if you would have pulled out a blade or did something like that, that was some punk shit, you don't want to be doing that. So it was almost like a samurai code, right? So growing up, it was like cooking, a lot of it was like that, representing your neighborhood.

BN: And then I didn't ask you about sports as much. What was your sport in particular, or did you play multiple...

NN: You know, we grew up with JA Leagues, and so I guess my older brother Patrick, he was part of the first group when all the Niseis got together and started to form these teams so their kids could play organized ball. Because I think at that time, high schools and all that, I guess we were considered too small to play at the high school level, so they still wanted us to have an opportunity to participate in sports and do sportsmanship and team camaraderie, for all the good reasons, so they started at the JA leagues. So I kind of got into it in junior high school, and I played on Tiger Organization, and I played basketball in the winter, and then we had baseball, JA baseball in the summer. So kind of takes up your whole year, and you're with a group of teammates, becoming lifetime friends kind of thing. It wasn't me, but it was I mean, throughout our community.

BN: Did you play in high school?

NN: I played in the lower division in high school, because they went by exponents like weight and height. I was kind of a flyweight, so I had B components, but I could have tried out for varsity or whatever. But I think back then, for the lower divisions, classifications like our school, Dorsey, which there was a lot of Buddhaheads playing in the lower divisions like B football and B basketball, this kind of stuff, B track, that basically we did exceptionally well, kind of like, in a way, southern league, which at that time was like all the inner city schools, meaning all the Black schools.

<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]

<Begin Segment 12>

BN: So anyway, let's go back now to where we left off. And you had, as you said, you had enlisted, basically. And then can you just kind of talk about that experience and what happens subsequently?

NN: It was bad. Like day one, day one was the night before I reported to the induction center which was like, I think, Hill Street in downtown, that my friends threw me a party. I got totally wasted, so come toward the morning when started to get light, they dumped me off in front of my house, and I guess my parents were waiting for me because they knew I had to report that morning. So I guess when they heard my parents coming to the front door, they just kind of took off and so I'm laid out on the front porch, and then they get me in and they tried to sober me up a little bit. And I guess the only advice that my dad gave me was, "Don't go AWOL." So he took me to Hill Street and he dropped me off.

And during that day that we got sworn in, there must have been hundreds of us in this auditorium like room, sitting in these little chairs, and you would wait for your branch to be called. Like, "All the Air Force, would you please go outside and find bus da-da-da." And I think I was just so wasted that I'm just knocked out and everything, but it was probably late in the afternoon when they called for the Marines and the Navy to report outside the induction center and get on bus so-and-so. So I'm on my way, and we hit rush hour traffic. So to get to San Diego, by the time we get there, it's dark. And I remember I fell asleep, and when I woke up in the bus, everything was dark except for the courtesy lights they had on the side of the bus, and I heard this drill instructor shouting. Like, "You motherfucking Marines, get your fucking asses out of the thing," and spiting while he's talking. And it's like a bad dream. And then I guess one of the guys that was like a Navy recruit, started to say, "So long, suckers," or something. And that DI went up to him and, "Bam," just fired on him. I'm going, "Oh, shit." And from there, we all just scrambled to get off the bus because he was throwing people out, off the bus, and also we all scrambled and we got off the bus and we had to stand on these yellow footprints and wait for other buses from other areas to come and fill up all the footprints so we could be divided up into platoons to form a company. And I don't know how long I was standing on these footprints, but here I am, I could barely stand up. But then I had to because they would be going around and firing on people for slouching or looking around. So you're kind of seriously scared by then.

Finally, all the buses came, and all of us occupied all the footprints, and there must have been about close to maybe about, a little less than three hundred of us. And then DI, Drill Instructor, would start calling your names out. He'd say, "Okay, when you hear your name called, go stand over here," and they would start calling out names. "Private Smith, Private Jones, Private Beckham, blah, blah, blah." And I'm still standing there. And so one group was formed and they were taken away, and then finally, he says, the guy up there says, "Private Charlie Chan." And that was funny to me. I'm thinking, "That sure was cold, naming your kid Charlie Chan," right? Yeah. And he says again, "Private Charlie Chan." And I'm kind of looking around, like "Who the fuck is it? Who's Charlie Chan?" And then the DI comes running straight at me, and he had the Smokey the Bear hat on, and the tip of that touched my forehead, and he says, "I'm talking to you, Jap." I mean, it was like shock, right? "Yes, sir," and I had to go to that spot over there. And I guess when they got all of us over there, they marched us over to the billets, and at the billets we were messed with a lot more. Showed us how to... well, first of all, they took us to these different places and got all your, got all these clothing and all this other kind of stuff, and we had to put our civilian clothes in a box and da-da-da. Then they had us all march into this little stall where they had showers, a few showers, and then there was about ninety of us all butt naked, all elbow to asshole, right? You couldn't move around, and there's water pouring down, and I don't even think I got wet.

But you come out and they kind of mess with you some more, and then they marched us over to the billet area which was this desolate, it was all dirt. It was all dirt and felt like you were in the desert, but they had these billets, corrugated billets. And they had four squads, I found out, but the billet I got in, each billet had a drill instructor in there telling us how to make our beds, and we have like ten minutes to make it, and actually it's pretty... I do to this day, I do this military talk, and says, "You do your bed, I got this quarter, and I'm going to throw it off your bed, and if it doesn't bounce, you're getting ass whipped," kind of thing, so trying to make our beds right. I never made my bed at home. Of course, you only got ten minutes, but I was able to manage. But then, he says, "When I say, 'Hit the rack,'" we have bunks. He says, "When I say, 'Hit the rack,' I want you say, 'Aye aye, Sir,' and you jump into bed." And then we were going, he said, "Hit the rack," and we all jumped into bed. "Too slow, get up," we get up, and I swore he must have did that shit for about like fifteen minutes, man. We were going in and out this bed, they call it the racks, right? And then finally it was like we were all sweating and everything, and it'd be like, "Okay, we did it." But in the morning time, when you hear the reveille, you got to get up and be lined up in front of the billets in formation, and you got, fucking, like, ten minutes to put on your fatigues and be out there, and your bed better be made. So no one slept in the bed. And then, plus, from the time we got off the bus 'til right now, we didn't get to use the bathroom, so a cat's got to whizz and stuff, right? People are doing it in their canteens and shit like that, right? So anyway, that's the first night there. Didn't get any better. [Laughs]

So the next day, I'm figuring that, I mean, I'm thinking, I think they're just messing with us the first night to try to scare us. They did a pretty good job, but I think now they kind of shocked us, that now they'll start to teach us. All they taught us was mind control. Because all this stuff really served an overall purpose of following orders. Never question it, follow orders without hesitation. And I guess the end result, if you're told to go kill somebody, that it's an order. So it was like, basically like, I think boot camp then was about, maybe about eleven, twelve weeks of indoctrination. But in the meantime, there's a lot of physical training.

<Begin Segment 13>

BN: So beyond that, you're also, have an Asian face, and you're being prepared to fight an Asian enemy. How does that impact your experience?

NN: Well, I was called every derogatory ethnic slur that was imaginable. But they kind of focused more on the Vietnamese thing. Because "Charlie," I guess, the enemy, Vietnamese were called "Charlie," "gook," called, "Ho Chi Minh," "slopehead." And within the, there's like three platoons in the company, and each platoon has, started off with something like ninety recruits. And so ninety times three, so that makes about two hundred and eighty of us Marines. And out of two hundred and eighty, I'm the only Asian face in the whole damn thing. So I was told to stand up, because, "This is what a gook looks like," that kind of bullshit. So some of that... I mean, actually, it wasn't only me that was, everyone else was called "niggahs" and "chief," "beaners," I mean, everybody was called out their name. But it was different because I didn't have any, really like any support, kind of thing. And the only actual support that I ever felt was with some of the inner city Blacks that were... and I guess maybe in terms of their experience, they're somewhat of an empathy that, they would have blanket parties, and blanket parties is that we're pitted against each other all day. And if you don't do something, that you don't get punished, but everyone else gets punished. So at the end, if you're the one that's making everyone get punished, that everyone's going to turn on you. And so what they do at night is that the ones that, what do they call it, what was the name? Like "shitbirds," they call them "shitbirds." The ones that were shitbirds at night, that they had these vigilante crews come throw a blanket over the shitbird and everyone fires on 'em and beats 'em. And then before they could gather their senses, everybody's back in their rack, kind of like that. And then unfortunately, it works. Because the next day, the former shitbirds are now keeping up with everything. So you could kind of see all this psychological, it's almost like warfare. So one day, I ended up a shirtbird, because we were doing exercises.

[Interruption]

NN: So anyway, I'm a shitbird. [Laughs] Because they were doing exercises, and I was trying to be slick, I was trying to be slick again, kind of looking around and trying to not do it, right? So I get called up to the front, and a couple other guys were going along with the routine, so all of us were standing out there, and then all the other fellow recruits were out there sweating, getting all dirty, and they tell us, "You know what? Smile at them." So we're in front of everybody that's being tortured, and showing 'em some teeth. So you could see all these guys doing all this stuff, they're looking at you like you're at fault. I'm thinking, "Oh, shit, be ready." So I guess that night when we get back to the billet, that one of the brothers named Hill, and he's from East St. Louis, East St. Louis, Illinois. So he said, "Hey, man, don't worry, the brother's got your back." So, cool, right. So I got a pass.

But overall, there were, at that time in the Vietnam conflict before the draft, that all my fellow recruits, I was nineteen at the time, yeah, I think it was nineteen. That I was actually a little bit over the norm in terms of age, that we were all kids, I mean, big kids, we're all kids out there. And then we were the ones that were expendable, like the ones that weren't going to school, that were fucking up, either like you want to go to jail or you want to join the Marines?" that kind of stuff. So we were expendable, like the at-risk kind of kids. And there were a lot of, we came from everywhere, like nationally. So there were a lot of white kids that had actually never seen, we were Orientals at that time, never seen an Oriental, maybe at a restaurant or something like that, they don't even have a clue. So when you have anything like this DI, the drill instructors would tell them about what a "gook" is, things like the women have their "vi-ginas are slanted like their eyes." I mean, you know, all kind of bullshit, right? And, "The goal of a 'gook' is to die and get reincarnated as a water buffalo." So everything's so dehumanized, that how it affected me was that, like a lot of these hillbilly types, that they would ask me, "Hey, is that true?" "Fuck you, motherfucker." So there was fights, actually, two fights that I got in, and it was always like with one of these white guys that would just cross the line. So you just got to fight.

Anyway, that was my experience in boot camp, but I made it out in one piece. And I actually gained weight and got a little bit healthier physically. But I guess when I came home, when I came home from boot camp, you get a little bit of leave before you have to go to the advanced infantry training. And I guess my mom was asking me why I'm so quiet, and I didn't know what to say.

BN: How long was your leave?

NN: It was maybe about two weeks. Two weeks and then you'd go to advanced military training and you learn how to kill, and then you come home. During that time, though, you're out of boot camp so you get weekend passes.

BN: When you came back, did you see your old friends again?

NN: No, not too much. Not too much, I just kind of wanted to chill. And then the other, out of the three other guys had also enlisted at the same time, like one of them got rejected because he had a juvenile, he had a juvenile record for glue sniffing. So they didn't want glue sniffers in the army, but you can be a rapist or a killer, but anyway, you can't be sniffing glue anyway. But the other two went in on the buddy system, and they went after me, because I went in first because I wanted to get over, I just wanted to get out of Dodge, I just didn't even wait for them, so I went in first. So when I was in, I actually tried to sneak out one night to make a phone call to tell them don't come. But I didn't get very far.

<Begin Segment 14>

BN: So after the military training and other leave, and then are you deployed at that point?

NN: Yeah, I was sent overseas. And we get sent to Okinawa to get your final orders, and then when we got to Okinawa, I guess it was my first time I ever was in any foreign country. And then you get a leave. I mean, they'll let you out for the day, and then every... what I learned at that time was every military base, there's a honkey-tonk town right outside the base even in Japan at that time, that was there to cater to the needs of the U.S. servicemen, so right outside the base of, I think we were in Naha, that there was little village they called Kenville, and this was where, like, they had hostess bars and American eating food kind of places like massage places, tailors and all this kind of stuff. So went to town, it reminded me of going to Tijuana back then. And it was pretty... in hindsight, it was real, it was pretty ugly, especially for the young woman. So I was at Okinawa for maybe a few days, and then I get orders to go to Japan. They sent me to Iwakuni, Japan, and my MOS is like a clerical, and I get clerical because at Dorsey, I took a typing class, so probably the only one to type. So I lucked out in that sense, so I'm Okinawa, and like in this office, I'm figuring, you know what, I'm kind of at home. And that was, but I'm still on a military base, but they have this town outside the military base in Okinawa, it's another honky-tonk town, and I think at the end they call it Three Corners because it tees off or something like that, you know. I remember the first time I have a leave, going to a bar and a club, and all these young beautiful women stand up, "Irasshai." "You talking to me?" kind of thing. I stayed in Okinawa about five months, and what my parents, they sent me the address of the Nagtanis in Japan that lived in Hiroshima, around Hiroshima in the country. So I was able to go to visit relatives one day. And they still remember that. They said, this Marine came one day, come by...

BN: Just to back up, this is near Iwakuni, right? Because you said you were five months in Okinawa?

NN: No, no, I was five months in Iwakuni.

BN: Iwakuni, okay. Was that the first time you'd been to Japan?

NN: Yes. And then I also got to firsthand experience the term, "the Ugly American" where all the, especially all the Caucasian Marines, they would complain about, even on base like all the Japanese nationals that work on base, how come they can't speak English, blah, blah, blah. They would talk about Japanese as if I'm not one. So it started to eat at me somewhat, but they would never use the word "Jap," at least in front of me. But then I was very conscious about my attendance all the time, that someone was going to slip. I guess it got to a breaking point where when I came over from Okinawa to Japan, some of the people that I came with that we got the same orders were a couple of white guys, and they were assigned to the mess hall, they were cooks. And one was pretty tall, and the other guy was just big, not sumo sized, but he was big. And so I knew them because we came over together, and I see them on base, and, "What's up?" kind of shit, right? But then one night, I'm at a bar, nursing a drink, and these two guys come in. I think they see me and they say, I'm pretty sure they said, "What's up, Jack?" I'm going, "What did you say?" He says, "What's up, Jack?" I said, "No, what'd you really say?" It's kind of like that Robert De Niro movie, Taxi Driver, he said, "You talking to me?" [Laughs] "What'd you really say?" He said, "What's up, Jack?" I said, "No." He finally said, "Okay, I said, 'What's up, Jap?'" So I got my drink and I hit him with the cup, right? And then all hell broke loose, you know, we're fighting in there, and then they called the MPs. So we're still pissed, so we said, "Okay, we'll meet you at (Three) Corners." So we go there, and then I had this other guy that I worked in the office with that kind made sure the other big dude didn't jump in. So me and this guy, we're fighting for about... I mean, you fight for two or three minutes, it feels like forever. [Laughs] So it was only about two or three minutes, but he's so big that I couldn't put him down, but I'm quick, so he couldn't catch me. So da-da-da, and doing that for a while. And finally, we grabbed each other, and then by this time, all the steam's out of both of us and he kind of says, "What are we doing this for?" "I don't know, man." So we parted ways. And then the next morning, I'm getting my food, and this fucker's serving me. And I'm going, "Oh, shit, man, I got to do something about this." But shortly thereafter, I get orders to go to Vietnam. So ended up in Vietnam for, I guess when you get sent overseas, you get thirteen months, so I did the remaining seven months in Vietnam.

<Begin Segment 15>

BN: What was your experience in Vietnam?

NN: When I got to my assignment, which was in Quang Tri Province, it was Dong Ha, it was like they had Vietnam broken into different areas, and it was called (Northern) I Corps, that was a little bit like north. And then it was like a Headquarters Company combat base, and my first impression was, kind of reminded me of being in a real-life Western, where everybody was walking around packing guns. And I liked it in the sense where all the military d�cor was forgotten, Because, I mean, cats had your fatigues on, you just dressed, no inspection kind of stuff. A lot of the Blacks, the brothers, they're having naturals, bushes, so it's like back home a little bit. And so it was more lax. You know, in a way, growing up in the community, that everybody knows each other, so someone can't go there and talk, talk something they can't back up. And it's kind of like that in Vietnam where you just have to carry your weight, and be right. So I'm okay with that.

Like I was assigned to the company office, and they wanted me to do this thing they called the Unit Diary, and it was like this new implementation of a system that every day you're supposed to put down statistics about how many people were injured, how many people were killed in action, how many of the enemy were killed, people that went on leave, everything, right? So they wanted me to get trained to do that stuff because it was brand new, right? So I went to this schooling thing for about a week, and they showed, you know how you get these plates and you got, whatever that they were showing. But once again, my lack of interest in school, and I went back, and so I'm in charge of the Unit Diary, and no one could supervise me because no one knows how to do it, and neither do I. [Laughs] So that's that, right? And it was like morale was, no one really cares. I mean, in a certain way, if you're on the push, you care, but if you're back there in the rear, "Why the fuck are we doing this shit?" So usually during the day, I would know people like in the motor pool or a supply, or different, there were sniper platoons over there. So I would just do whatever I felt like during the day, and then if there was some kind of caravan going to drop off supplies or doing whatever a caravan does, we'd jump in these trucks with cattle guards, and then we'd be packed in there and we'd just go down on down Highway Vietnam. So I go on caravans and just do whatever, so I just, that was basically what I was doing.

There was... the camaraderie was, it was okay. The camaraderie was okay, that one difference was for us that went to Vietnam, that we didn't go as a unit, we went individually. So when I went there, I mean, I'm the new guy, right? And fortunately, I'm not in the bush, so they don't make me walk the point. But then you're the new guy and you just kind of make your way around. You're actually, at first, you're a cherry, called a cherry. And then probably up until a new cherry comes and takes your place, and then you're... so when somebody leaves, that you break out a bottle and we celebrate them getting out of here. And it was like the morale was, it was actually the pits, where you're not, there's no patriotism of what you're doing, you're just doing, you're just there to get out of there in one piece.

BN: I was going to ask, you didn't have any real gung ho, super patriot types?

NN: I met one cat, and he was like, I think he was a Samoan from Hawaii. But he was out in the bush and then... I forgot his name. But I remember him because such an impact that he had, and it was this one night that they came back from the patrol, and he came into this hooch that we had that we all used to go there to drink beer and drink hard shit and whatnot, right? So he comes in, and I want to say his name was Tau or something, right? But he gravitated toward me because I'm Asian. So I think he was telling me all this stuff that, I mean, I really didn't want to know about it. I think this was his third tier there, third tour there. And he was like a machine gunner, and like the machines that you put on a tripod, but this is a big dude, he just carried it around, really Rambo kind of shit. He was telling me about all the people he killed. So he was kind of gone, and then I think that night, the place was pretty packed. The Blacks were partying and they'd do shit like, "Okay, everybody, we're give a toast to Black Power." Picked up a glass to drink, and Tau would stand up and, "Fuck all that. Everybody stand up and give a toast to Pineapple Power." And this dude was kind of menacing, so everybody was doing this "Pineapple Power" shit. And then I remember him asking me that, you know, the guy sitting across from us, this white guy, but I knew him, and he says, "You know what? Do you want to see me poke his eyes?" I said, "What? That's cool." "Okay." I said, oh, okay, we started about something else. But that night, when I left the club, I heard the next morning that they had to medevac like three guys out of a helicopter. Because three guys tried to jump on Tau. And Tau's like, "You know what?" I think he was telling me he was trained in these martial arts, like he sent them all to the hospital. So I mean, you meet some characters, man.

Then in the sniper platoon, there was this one guy that... and I guess what they would do is they have these things they called "free fire zones." And that's an area that if anyone is inside that area, that zone, you could fire, you could kill 'em, because that's a free fire zone. So all the villagers hopefully know that, you know, step into a free fire zone, so he would go up there, up on a grassy knoll or something with binoculars where they have a spotter. And if they see any type of movement, they'd get their sniper gun, rifle, and they'd blow 'em away. And then that would count as like a kill, right? So this guy was wanting to set the record for the most kills. So he comes in, and he's arguing with the first sergeant, was a sergeant major that's in charge of keeping all the records in the office. And he says, "You only gave me credit for one kill." "And that's all you got is one kill." And he says, "No, but she was pregnant, so she'd get two, right?" "Get the fuck out of here," kind of thing. So, I mean, these are the kind of people that are coming back to quote/unquote civilization, inside the sniper hooch, they would have skulls to put candles in, and sockets and all that kind of stuff.

<Begin Segment 16>

BN: I was going to ask, I think, whether it was in our conversation or another interview, that one of the things that happens in this kind of experience in Vietnam is that you also form really close bonds with some of the guys you're there with. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that.

NN: When you're in that situation, meaning that there's no pretenses or no need to have any types of fronts that you could... and then, plus, we're all away from home, and you could get in some pretty meaningful dialogues or conversations or form bonds that normally you wouldn't have if you're home. And it's not even a matter of trust, because actually, you're never going to see this person again. So I've met Marines from the Deep South, places where they would probably have lynched, have relatives that were involved in lynchings, and what their experience is like, something totally new also. Because, I mean, they're here in this situation now where white supremacy is no longer rolling. So they see the Black soldiers, like exerting their rights, exerting their voices and their power. And some of them would say, "When I get to know them as people, this would never happen back home." [Laughs] "What would never happen?" "You know, I'm not used to this kind of thing." And they're being honest. I mean, little tidbits like that, were more of a, getting people to know, kind of like that's part of their DNA. But it's probably a good thing that they experienced it.

BN: And then some of the stuff that you're seeing, are you... I guess, I know that you become more politicized later, but does the political dynamic of what's going on start to, I mean, does this experience sort of change the way you see the world?

NN: I think the only thing, like I used to question, it wasn't a deep philosophical thought, but if I have guard duty or line duty at night, and I'm on the perimeter, it's pitch black out there, look at the sky, and it was like something you've never seen before. There's the stars out there, and almost inches apart, but the whole sky is lit up, and they're kind of like, whoa. But I used to think sometimes about why am I... it was almost like why was I fortunate to be born on this side other than that side? Because I didn't give it too much thought, but shit like that'd never been in my mind before. But in terms of some deep systemic kinds of questions that, fortunately, that it didn't enter... I wasn't into that train of thought, or even to explore it at that time. And I think it was probably good, because I might have ended up in the brig or dead or whatever. But I do know that there was a Black Power movement going on right there in Vietnam, where they saw what was going on entirely different. I shouldn't say entirely different, but they saw different than other soldiers, which I respected and admired. And I couldn't be part of that because I'm not Black, but I understood. And it was almost like, you know what, I was a little bit envious, too, because, like I said, we come in individually, so when I came, entered, we called it when I entered "in country," we called, like, Vietnam, that I had no greetings, basically fending on my own. But when a Black soldier came in, I mean, there's a welcoming party. Like all the other brothers, "Hey, brother, where you from?" "You know so and so," or da-da-da, "You been over here?" There's all this commonality, but they were protective of each other, and they understood basically not only why they were there, but kind of like who's the oppressor.

BN: Did you ever run into any other Asian Americans through your whole tour?

NN: Yes. There was a brother from Azusa that I got tight with named Kawata. I never bothered to look him when I came back, but we got pretty close. In his experience, though, he was kind of, he grew up around whites in Azusa. And you know, he had some [inaudible] treated him, and we got along pretty well. There was the Kudo brothers, and they were twins, but I knew one of them was Joji and the other one was Kenji. And I knew Kenji, I mean, I knew Joji because he used to always be at the parties and the dances. So I knew Joji when I saw who I thought was Joji, I think it was riding, he was in a jeep or something, right? "Hey, Joji," he said, "No, Kenji." So we kind of talked. When we got back, we were both in the same veterans group, me and Kenji, and this other, one of the friends that was there when we all enlisted, name was Russell. I found out where he was at, and he was at this other base that was, I guess, close enough to me where if I could jump on a convoy, I could get over there and see him. So I took off on a convoy to go hang out with him one night, and then we kind of chopped it up a little bit.

So Russell was, Russell loved to get high, so they used to have them things they called darvon, and it was a painkiller. But the only thing, it was in a capsule, and they had some powder in there. It didn't do anything, but they had this little ball attached to the capsule, and that's the stuff that kills the pain. So he would get all these darvons and open up the capsule and he had all these little things over there. So said, "Hey, man, you want to get high?" "I don't do that shit right now." [Laughs] But I remember when I was visiting him, we got rocketed that night. And then Russell was kind of a scam artist, so I don't think he was in infantry, but he was out there in the bush. And when I saw Russell, he was in the rear now, and you ever see that series called Gunsmoke? Chester? He was limping worse than Chester. He was like a club foot, he was dragging that foot, and I'm going, "What happened, man?" So he's telling me he dropped some ammunition box on his foot, and so they had to bring him to the rear and they're talking about sending him home. So it got him out of the bush, and then I felt so bad for him, said, "Oh, man, you got to do something, man." So they sent him home, and this is jumping forward. So when I get home, he's already home now, because he got sent back. I go by Dorsey High to see who do I know on the Tigers, playing basketball, and I go in the gym, and I see Russell running full court. [Laughs] I said, "That's pretty slick, man." But he denies it. "They healed me, man." So what was I... what were we talking about?

BN: Oh, I was just asking you about if you encountered other Asian Americans?

NN: Oh, yeah, yeah, okay.

BN: And then he said you were there seven months, was it?

NN: Seven months.

BN: So are you counting down the days?

NN: Oh, yeah, they have what they call short time calendars. And it's like paint by the numbers. So it's a picture of something, but every day, from fifty or a hundred, you start crossing off the days until you get to your day where you get to, they used to call it "go back to the world," they call it going back to America "the world."

BN: And then is there a celebration?

NN: Oh, you know, we just go back to that little hooch kind of thing, then I think the going away song that was the theme was "People Get Ready," by the Millers Brothers. "People get ready, there's a train a-comin'."

BN: The Impressionists.

NN: Yeah, yeah, they did that, too. So we'd do that and we drank it up and pack your bag and you're on the bird the next day.

BN: Do you know the dates, what year you were there?

NN: I was there from... let's see, I enlisted in '68, so probably March of '68. So I think I was there at the end of '68 to '69, that was thirteen months.

<Begin Segment 17>

BN: Where were you when Martin Luther King was assassinated?

NN: What year was that?

BN: That would have been, it was '68. I don't remember the month now.

NN: You know what? Because I know when they had the Alabama bombings. Not the Alabama, where they killed like the three kids at the church.

BN: The church bombing.

NN: Right.

BN: That was earlier.

NN: I was at Sequoias, I was at junior college.

[Interruption]

BN: Did you remember the MLK assassination, Robert Kennedy?

NN: Do you remember the year of that?

BN: They were both '68.

NN: It was '68?

BN: I know Kennedy was assassinated in June. I don't remember when MLK was. I want to say, I think that was August.

NN: Then I was at Dorsey at the time. For Kennedy, I was at Dorsey. I think Kennedy was before '68, wasn't it?

BN: Well, no.

NN: You're talking about Robert?

BN: Yeah, Robert.

NN: Oh, I'm talking about JFK.

BN: Yeah, JFK, you would have been at Dorsey, yeah. Robert's like five years later. I'm just wondering, you're probably in the service at that point, so I was just wondering where you were when these happened? But if you don't, if it doesn't come to you right away, then that's fine.

NN: All I remember, though, was the Jets beat the Colts when I was overseas.

BN: Ah, the Super Bowl.

NN: Yeah, Joe Namath.

BN: Joe Namath, yeah.

NN: Because we get the Stars and Stripes, and they would talk about that kind of stuff, but they would talk about it. MLK.

BN: I think this is a good, probably right as you're getting out is a good place to end. One thing I wanted to ask you before we finish is, did you have any awareness of the whole 442nd story and the Nisei soldier story at this point, and did you have family members who were World War II vets?

NN: No. I had a friend whose father lost a leg, had a prosthesis, and he was a vet. But no one talked about it, and I think, to this day, that there's a group that talk about their patriotism, and what they have done for the community, and everything is really kind of like, more or less like a "model minority" proudness. I don't know how to put it. And from everything that I've seen or heard from the rank and file, the soldiers that, it's only like, to me, like the mucky-mucks talked that stuff, but they're the ones that have lived it, are still living it, like you know what, they're solid. And I kind of say that, too, because I had that experience where they opened up the Budokan. That Budokan should have been opened up like decades earlier, because we could have got First Street North for fucking free. But then I guess JANM and MOCA got into this thing where MOCA didn't want it there, because it's going to interfere with their ambiance. And then to swing the tide, they got some of the spokespeople of the 442 to come in to a community meeting and say, "We don't want a gym there because it's going to interfere with our monument." And no one even knows the monument's there, and to have a gym right next to that, they have the kids to walk by and honor that darn thing, but then that's when I kind of learned that, you know what, they don't really, to me, represent the heart and soul of the 442, and the heart and soul is what I respect. But to answer your question, that most of the 442 members of the Crenshaw area were not spokespeople. But they just kept it to themselves.

BN: Why don't we end here for today?

NN: Okay.

BN: It seems like a good place, and then there's plenty more to talk about later for the next time.