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MN: So when you were growing up in the Sacramento area, who were your playmates? Were they Japanese Americans or non-Japanese Americans?

SO: Primarily Japanese Americans. We lived in a Japanese neighborhood, so primarily they were all Japanese.

MN: What kind of games did you play?

SO: Well, marbles and cards. You'd line 'em up against the wall and the closest one to the wall would take all the cards. I mean, it was like a gambling, like marbles, you win, you win the marbles. Or you flatten out soda can tops, I mean soda bottle tops -- you know, they didn't have canned soda at the time. They had the bottled soda with a metal cap on it. We used to flatten those out and you'd put a pile on the ground, and you'd slap your, slap the cans with another can top, and the ones that flipped over with the picture side on 'em you kept. So most of the games were gambling games, minor.

MN: How did you flatten the tops?

SO: With a hammer.

MN: And the card game, was this a deck of cards?

SO: No, these were like baseball cards. And some would, they'd wax them so that they became harder on the surface and didn't wear out as much, or they'd wet 'em and when they threw, threw 'em it'd slap on the wall and stick. So that was, I guess, cheating. And we used to play pretty rough games, like, I don't know whether you've heard of hop the chicken, where a person is it and he has to hop on one leg and try to catch other people, and if you, if the guy that was it dropped his leg, then you punched him until he could run to a safe area. Or we'd have break the donkey's back, where one person would stand up, straight up against the wall and the others would grab him and bend down and each progressive person would, would bend down and hang onto the person in front of him. And the rest of us would, the team that was competing, they would jump on the backs and pile on, try to pile on one person so that his legs would give away and collapse. And that's, I guess that's why they call it break the donkey's back. Then they had tag and kick the can, so we made up our own games. I don't think kids play that now.

MN: Share with us, what's kick the can?

SO: Kick the can, one person is it and somebody would kick the can and they would all go hide, and then the person that was it would go looking for them, and if he saw them he would say, "I spy you," or something to that effect, and that person would be caught and had to come back and be put in a, like a detention area. So if someone would kick the can, then everybody was free and they'd go hide again, and the guy that was it would have to find all of the people. When he found all the people, then somebody else would be it.

MN: What about roller skates? I know that was very popular at that time.

SO: Roller skates, we used to take 'em apart and put 'em on a two-by-four and then nail a box on there and call it a scooter. And I know it was popular in San Francisco where there were a lot of hills. Then skates, we used to put the skates on and get a broom handle, put it between our legs and ride down the hill, and the broom handle being between our legs, we would pull up on 'em and that would be our brake, but it was a dangerous thing.

MN: Did you ever get injured?

SO: Not that I can remember. I don't think I was that daring.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.