<Begin Segment 16>

TI: Okay, so Louie, we're going to go into the second hour now. And we had talked a lot about the town, the school, the Oriental School, the housing situation. I want to talk a little bit more about, now, back to your personal kind of growing up, your childhood memories. And why don't we talk about... when you're a boy, say maybe twelve years old, what are some of the fun things that you remember doing?

LW: Well, what we did most of the time is that during the summer vacation, during the break, school, we used to go right across that river, Sacramento River, right across, we used to go there swimming almost every day. And friend come over and then we'd play... not, what do you call that game? You put the money on... buy houses? Monopoly?

TI: Monopoly.

LW: Yeah, we used to play that. That's part of the, half a day, we used to spend half a day.

TI: Yeah, so let me go back to the swimming part. So I look at the Sacramento River, I mean, how did you and your friends learn how to swim? It's a big body of water.

LW: There's nobody to teach you, you just go there and just stay in the water and hope you don't drown yourself. It's amazing, all those kids that went swimming there, not even one drowning. And nobody to teach 'em how. And you know, that's, it's, the current sometimes goes fast. And that Sacramento River, they dump everything in that river, because it's not like now, with the sewer going, whatever sewer in town, that goes right out to the front of the river there. And they, the packing shed, the asparagus and all that, trimming, they all dump in the river. And high tide, it goes toward the ocean, then they come back again. And when we're swimming, all that sewer stuff comes in. [Laughs] So between that half an hour, everybody gets out and wait until the tide changed, then when the tide changed, we would go back swimming again. But nobody got sick or anything like that.

TI: Now, in terms of swimming, was there a particular part of the river that you would go swimming, or would you just go anywhere? I mean, was there like a certain beach...

LW: No, that certain part, because we had one of those rope that, you know like the Tarzan, that swing around and goes in the water. Then we could swim across the river, it's not that far across the river. But when the current's fast, it's kind of hard. Then a friend of mine used to dive from that bridge there, you know that bridge there? You're not supposed to, but we used to do that. Then that Ride Hotel, remember that, we used to go over there for a while, because they had a lot of sand there, see.

TI: Okay, so there were certain parts you'd go swimming, one would dive off the bridge, and then you guys would be able to swim across. So you were --

LW: Yeah, if you wanted, certain people would swim across because they couldn't make it.

TI: Yeah, you'd have to be a pretty good swimmer.

LW: Yeah, that's what I mean. Nobody in the swimming pool. It's a different ball game if you're swimming in the river and in the pool. That's why I guess more kids get, drowned. They don't know the currents and the temperature underneath there.

TI: But when you were growing up, there were no drownings or anything, so people...

LW: No. No drownings at all.

TI: So you guys would know enough in terms of what, when people were capable, watched out for each other...

LW: Yeah, they kind of watch each other. The older guys maybe once in a while, but that's where we'd spend most of the summer vacation, in the river.

TI: Now, do you recall some of your friends that you would go swimming with and do these things before the war, some of the people?

LW: Well, there were some, one in town either died or pretty sick, I think. We played, when we were kids, we'd play baseball, pickup games. And you know, during the wintertime, when it rains, you know that, what do you call the stick? I don't know what you call it. You get a couple of those sticks and you hit each other. And when they knock you down... I don't know what you call that game. We used to play that. I don't think nowadays, they don't play. But we used to have that. And marbles, you know, those marbles, we used to play that.

TI: How about things like camping? Did you ever go camping with your friends?

LW: No. Well, can't afford it, to go camping. Well, that older group that had the Boy Scouts once a year, they went camping up in the mountains. But we never went camping.

TI: How about, did you guys ever make, like, little rafts and go on the river?

LW: No, we never make any of those things. Nobody owned a boat, unless the older people that go fishing.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright (c) 2009 Densho and Preserving California's Japantowns. All Rights Reserved.