<Begin Segment 9>

MN: Let me ask you a little bit about your school while you were here. When you were living with your aunt and uncle, which school did you attend?

SO: Well, I can remember, like I say, I went to kindergarten, I don't remember the school name, but primarily I went to a... let's see, how old was I? Might've been in junior high school. Francisco, Francisco Junior High School, and it was comprised primarily of maybe ninety percent Chinese, ten percent, nine percent Italians, and the rest were Caucasians or Japanese or whatever.

MN: Now, you were going to school, you said there's a ninety, about ninety percent Chinese American students, and around this time Japan was invading China. Did you have a lot of problems with the Chinese students there?

SO: No, not in school, but -- in fact, I had a couple of very good Chinese friends -- but the people that gave us most problems were these shoeshine kids that would hang around the different parks, and we used to get into scuffles with them all the time. Like my brother used to, like I say, make model airplanes, and we'd go out to the park and try to fly them, and these kids would chase them and try to take them away from us. And they'd make comments about that we killed their grandmother in China when we really had nothing to do with it. That was the primary source of problems with the Chinese people.

MN: So your friends when you were living here, who were your friends? Were they Caucasians, Chinese, Japanese?

SO: Well, my best friend was a Japanese fellow whose parents owned a cleaning establishment that was maybe three or four blocks away from my aunt's restaurant, and we used to hang around together. They had two older daughters that were my older cousin, cousin's age. Then the older brother and then the next person I, was my friend, guy named Masa Takatoshi. But I guess we were best friends only when I was there. [Laughs]

MN: What did you two do on your free time?

SO: We'd go on picnics. We'd scrape together enough money to buy what they call broken cookies, then we'd get day old bread and maybe we'd have enough for wieners or something, and we'd go to the marina and have a wienie bake. We'd just hang around and play Monopoly with his, he had two younger brothers. Just fooled around.

MN: Now, when you were living with your aunt and uncle, did your father correspond with you?

SO: No, he never wrote.

MN: How long did you live there?

SO: I must've lived there maybe a year, a year and a half.

MN: And then you moved down to Southern California to be with your father. Right?

SO: Yeah.

MN: Okay. Do you remember what year your father came down to Southern California?

SO: Probably in 1938 or '39.

MN: And then you came down, you said, about a year and a half later?

SO: Wait a minute, wait a minute. No. See, I came down in, in '41. It was either '40 or '41. I was in the tenth grade, so...

MN: So it'd be like maybe end of '38 or '39 that your father came down here?

SO: Yeah.

MN: So how did you feel about moving back in with your father?

SO: I really had no feelings about that.

MN: So when you moved down here, where was your father living at that time?

SO: Let's see, where was he living? Oh, he was living in an apartment, not an apartment, but in a house that the people rented the upstairs, and he had a bedroom and probably a kitchen. There were other, there was a bachelor, and his sister and husband and child. I think there were three families living there.

MN: And then once you moved down to Southern California, what school did you go to?

SO: I went to Venice High School.

MN: And what was the ethnic makeup of Venice High School at the time?

SO: Well, there were quite a few Japanese there, because it was a farm community, you know. Venice was a farm community. And in fact, there were kids that played on the baseball team or the basketball team. They were active in gymnastics and even football. But I tried to get on the swim team, but I couldn't do that because the pool that the swimming team used for practice, they wouldn't let, allow Japanese in there. So there was still discrimination.

MN: So which teams did you go out and try out for, since you couldn't get on the swimming team?

SO: Well, I got a letter in, if you would believe, E basketball. [Laughs] Now, they don't have that anymore. Then I tried out for the gym team, but I couldn't even chin myself, so didn't, didn't make out very well there.

MN: Now, you also mentioned when you moved down there you joined the Boy Scouts?

SO: Well, we tried to form a Boy Scout troop, and we tried to start a drum and bugle corps, so yeah, I joined the Boy Scout troop there.

MN: Who was sponsoring the Boy Scouts?

SO: It must've been the Japanese Venice Community Center, because the person that was our scoutmaster was a fellow called Kenny Kirohiro, and he was active, pretty active with the Community Center.

MN: Now your father, what did, what did he do for fun?

SO: He used to go downtown, Japanese-town, and I think he got in a group called Jurori. That was people who sang accompaniment for Noh, Noh plays, but as far as I was concerned, it was grunting.

MN: Was your father a drinker? Did he drink a lot?

SO: Yeah, but he couldn't hold his liquor very well. I remember in my younger days, I'm sorry to say, he used to go into the Buddhist church in Sacramento and drink with the priest and we'd have to go get him, and embarrassingly, we'd have to, my brother and I, would have to kind of hold him upright and bring him home. So it was quite an embarrassment.

MN: Did your father make his own liquor?

SO: No, he never did that. But like I say, he couldn't hold his liquor. I mean, a few drinks would get him, pass him out.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.