<Begin Segment 12>

MN: Let me ask about your school a little bit. You attended Lafayette junior high school later on. What was the ethnic makeup of the Lafayette junior high school?

TY: I would say it was probably fifty percent Japanese and/or Japanese American.

MN: How did you get along with the other students?

TY: Fine.

MN: And then from there you went to... which high school did you go to?

TY: Well, I was supposed to go to L.A. High School, 'cause that's the district that we moved to. But I knew I didn't belong there because the people that I met that were Japanese who went to L.A. High School, were kids from well-to-do families, their fathers were doctors and whatever. My father was a carpenter, where the hell am I gonna get that kind of money? And you talk to all the kids, I don't know about now, but then, you talk to some of these, "Well, I have four cashmere sweaters." I barely have a nylon one, what are you talking about? So I knew that I couldn't go there. Poly was better for me because we were all upper, lower middle class kids from all levels, but that's what we all identified with. So once you got in, you didn't even have to think about it.

MN: What year did you graduate from high school?

TY: Okay, I graduated the summer school in 1955. People say, "Summer school?" I said, yeah, my friend and I went to, in the very beginning we left elementary school -- not elementary, junior high school, we went in, and then we took our summer classes. So when we took our last summer class, that completed according to them the year's worth of school. So we were able to graduate a year ahead of everybody else. 'Cause all the friends of mine who didn't do that graduated a year later.

MN: Now when you were growing up, did you get involved in any of the Japanese American clubs or gangs?

TY: No, I was never part of that nani, what was that group called? My younger brother was in it.

MN: Is it west side, the Constituents?

TY: Constituents.

MN: Your brother was in that?

TY: Yeah, Yoshi was in it, who has since passed, but he was in that group.

MN: And Mo was in that group. Mo was in the older group, and Jim was in the Black Juans. But you didn't get involved in any of that.

TY: No, that wasn't my kind of stuff. I was more civic-minded. Get me in the straight and narrow and I could do that. After all, I was in the Boy Scouts, how could you possibly ask me to go in the Constituents?

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.