<Begin Segment 13>

TI: And were there ever events or times when the whole town would be together? Chinese, Japanese, and the whites, like maybe Fourth of July or something that everyone would be together?

LW: No, never did. We did our own, Japanese celebrated our own like New Year's, Fourth of July. Then during the Fourth of July, we had a community picnic, you know, where the Oriental School was in the back? That was once a year, they all come in to get together. The whole town and the people that live out in the ranch, whoever wants to come to the picnic, more like a reunion type. And they had a good time.

TI: So what about for the kids? When you were growing up before the war, how much interaction did you have with the white kids?

LW: We didn't have no relation at all, because we don't get to see each other. Only time we get to see each other was we play basketball, baseball against each other.

TI: Now, but later on, in high school, the school there --

LW: High school, we had busses coming in, we went to Courtland High School. And they have busses just strictly for the Japanese people that lives in Walnut Grove. So we had two busses just for Japanese people to go to the Courtland High School. That many kids were going there.

TI: But when they got to this high school, it was integrated. It was whites and...

LW: High school, yeah. That's the only time, so we weren't too close with them.

TI: So I'm curious if you ever went to like a graduation ceremony at the high school. So there you're graduating Japanese, Chinese, and whites. So that would be a case where all the people would be there.

LW: Yeah.

TI: And I'm curious, in those kind of events, if you had whites and Japanese and Chinese, what kind of interaction would you observe? What would you kind of see, do you think, amongst the groups? I mean, did they all sit in different parts?

LW: Yeah, see, what happened, see, they're not really close, so when you to eat in the cafeteria, the white people eat certain area, white, Chinese, Japanese. It's kind of a, more like segregated, too. And the busses, too, same thing, too. We get the leftover busses, you know, the one that's about ready to turn in. They get, the white people get the good busses. And whatever leftovers, we used to get it, give it to the Japanese.

TI: And how would you and your friends feel about that? Were there times where you would know that you would get the leftover busses? Did that ever cause you any kind of concern...

LW: No, because nothing we can do. It's not like the generation now. They could take you to court and all that, but what can we do? We just have to take it, what they give you. It's just like when you play sports, you know. Like we were going Courtland High School, my brother was telling me they only allow so many Oriental players, the team, because they want half of the white people to be on the team. Mostly all trustee kids, they're not, just like the color white and the black, remember in college, same thing like that.

TI: So it's almost like a quota.

LW: Yeah, they only take maybe five or six Japanese kids that's really good, and the rest of it would be all white people. But they get to play because the trustees' kids come from a wealthy family that they got more support, there, see. So there, it was kind of pretty bad when we were going to school there.

TI: And the thinking was, it just couldn't be helped. I mean, that's the way it was, and so you...

LW: Yeah, that's it. It's just like during the wartime, when they got drafted, they draft most all the Japanese, you know how they make the quotas for each district? So all the trustee kids never went to the service unless they, you know, or they drafted more Orientals to fill in the quotas. And that was bad, too, because you know that Koga barber shop? The mother was blind, okay. And he's the only support, he's the only son. So naturally, if they, if he goes to the army, who's going to support the mother and the business, right? So he fought that. So he spent one year in jail, government put him in jail. Because he had a right to get deferred, right? Yeah. So it was pretty bad like that.

TI: But even the local draft board was pretty much controlled by...

LW: Yeah, local board was controlled by the trustees, I mean, the white people. It's all white people on the board. So first thing they do, "Oh, we got these Japanese people, let's fill in the quota with the Japanese." So most of the Japanese people that, Kibei, they all got drafted in the service.

TI: And were there some people in the Japanese community that felt that this wasn't right? I mean, you mentioned earlier that pretty much, this was the way it was and you had to kind of accept it.

LW: Yeah, you know how the Nisei was. That's the way it is, we just get along.

TI: But were there any, like, Isseis who thought that was wrong?

LW: No, they didn't. They mind their own business.

TI: Okay, so let's recap a little bit. So you, we talked about how, in terms of the, the town was pretty segregated. You had a Japanese area, Chinese area, across the river was a white area. We just mentioned the schools and I want to go to that next. Because they actually had segregated schools. You had an Oriental school and you had a white school. And it wasn't just what we call de facto segregation, it was actually kind of set up so that the Japanese and Chinese had to go to the Oriental School, that they couldn't, even if they lived...

LW: No, you couldn't. Even though you live in the area, they won't. So they had busses come in just to take it to the Oriental School, you know. I got farmers that live close by there. They got busses just to bring in to the Oriental School. They can't... they could walk to school if they wanted to, but it was White school, so they won't let you in. It's really...

<End Segment 13> - Copyright (c) 2009 Densho and Preserving California's Japantowns. All Rights Reserved.