<Begin Segment 9>

TI: Now, during school, like high school, if your wife was here and I asked her, "So what kind of student was Yosh?" 'cause she was in the same class, what would she say?

YM: Well, I don't think she would say anything. [Laughs]

TI: [Laughs] Why is that?

YM: I wasn't a top student. I had grades, good grades, but not the honor roll type. I was too involved in other things. I liked to get involved with basketball and track and things like that. And my grades were good. I was a "B" average grade. Never pulled straight "A's" like my brothers and she did. [Laughs] But I think I did all right. I don't want to boast about it.

TI: Well, it sounds like you enjoyed sports.

YM: I enjoyed activities more, I was involved in more. I belonged to, we belonged to a Presbyterian church and Sunday school (...), so a lot of our class, my classmates, I knew before I went to high school. So made my life at high school really an easy entry into high school, 'cause I had friends there. So many people would come in for the first time and they don't really know anybody, but I had quite a few people who were quite active in school. So I was involved a little more in the class activities.

TI: And did you get involved in organized sports?

YM: I played basketball, which is, doesn't compare with basketball now. We're talking about early '30s. And we were just discussing that the other night. The basketball that we played is not basketball now. And the basketball that my wife played is not basketball either, which was limited to a certain part of the court and you couldn't move onto the other part. So this is altogether different sport now. Yes, I was involved in basketball since freshman year. We had, we had, in our school, we had three division, C... A, B and C, A was the varsity and middleweight and lightweight. And so you start with C class. We played the regular league games that the A, the varsity played, we'd all travel to the same school. And C game was first, and the B game and the varsity would play. So it was a regular league game. And had championship playoffs and things like that.

TI: And so what level did you play?

YM: I played the C and B. I played in the C, and then I moved up to the B. So that was my basketball.

TI: And generally when you played other teams, were there other Japanese on the teams?

YM: Yes, yes. And most of the schools around there, smaller school, we were in the smaller school league. Unless in football they would go into county playoff or something like that. My brother Art played football, and he was, got a write up in Fresno Bee, which was the main paper in Fresno area, they played Fresno county, Fresno High School, which was the large high school for, into the county playoffs. And the next day, he had a write up in the Fresno Bee, "Ninety-pound halfback from Fowler." [Laughs] Ninety-pound halfback, I think he weighed a hundred pounds. But they called him a ninety-pound halfback.

TI: Well, it was probably a hundred pounds with all his gear on. [Laughs] That's interesting. So it sounds like you and your brothers were pretty good athletes, I mean, you enjoyed...

YM: We weren't good, but we enjoyed it.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright ©2009 Densho and the Twin Cities JACL. All Rights Reserved.