<Begin Segment 4>

MN: Now let me ask you about your school a little. Which grammar school did you attend?

KM: The name of the grammar school was called Horace Mann school in Glendale.

MN: What was the ethnic makeup of the student population there?

KM: Oh, I would say there were probably ninety percent whites, maybe four or five percent Mexicans, and that was about it. And then Orientals, maybe one or two percent.

MN: How were you treated there since there were so few Asians?

KM: Well, I didn't feel any kind of discrimination in the schools, per se. But socially I didn't get invited to the kids', other kids' birthday parties. Like my kids' generation, where you invite all the classmates and all that, I never experienced that in grammar school.

MN: And this grammar school, was it very far, were you able to walk? How did you get to grammar school?

KM: Well, it was about a mile, mile and a half, I guess. I used to walk it.

MN: Now you mentioned that Horace Mann was predominately hakujin. So when you were growing up as a child, who were your playmates?

KM: Huh?

MN: Who were your playmates, where they hakujin or Japanese Americans, the kids that you played with?

KM: Oh, mostly all whites. There probably wasn't any... I don't think there was any Japanese in my class except myself. So all the guys I associated with in the same grade were all white kids.

MN: So growing up in Glendale, what did you do for fun with your friends?

KM: Well, I used to go out and play with the white guys, and get in all kinds of trouble, too, I guess. But it was, at that time, I think the white kids didn't have any, much discrimination against Orientals as it is today.

MN: So when you said you used to get into all kinds of things, share with us some of the things. Like you mentioned this old water reservoir.

KM: Oh, yeah. Well, there was an old abandoned reservoir across the street from me which eventually was made into a park. But most of the time it was abandoned, it rained, it used to fill up with water, so we used to get some big wooden boards and float it around in the reservoir. And then in the summertime when all the water was dried up, the younger kids and older guys used to take their motorcycle and go around the edges of the reservoir, they're having a lot of fun.

MN: And you were sharing about how you went to this milk farm, and you folks were swimming around in the milk farm area?

KM: Oh, you mean Roger Jessup used to have, they used to have a milk farm. And so they used to have a big lake there where I guess the cows used to paddle in. Anyway, we used to go swimming there, and we used to call it "Cow Piss Lake." But there was, the only other place that we could swim was part of the L.A. River, there were some pools of water that sort of became like our swimming hole.

MN: Was the L.A. River at that time all concrete as it is now?

KM: No. No, it was not all concrete, it was... well, it was, I guess part of it was concrete, but anyway, places or segments of the river where large water would pool and make it sort of like a little lake. But that was a little further down from Roger Jessup's cow lake, so we used to ride our bicycles down there.

MN: Any other memories you have of what sort of things you did while you were growing up in Glendale?

KM: Not really specifically, no.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.