Densho Digital Archive - Shoichi Kobara Interview (denshovh-kshoichi-01-0009)

<Begin Segment 9>

SK: But he always used to be... he liked to lecture. Later on in life, you could realize that's the facts of life, that it's really education. But like I never fight, because my father always tell me, "Don't fight." He says, "If you're gonna fight, you gotta be sure you're gonna win." Otherwise, what's the use fighting? There's no such thing as fair fight. You're gonna fight, you take advantage of his weakness, if he's a great big, big guy, he says, "Why fight him? He's gonna beat you up." He says, "So back off." Because I had couple of time where kids, you know how it is, and I never did fight. I remember one time the principal sent me into the washroom, they had a washroom in the outside of the building, and I was arguing with one kid playing recess time. So he told me to, "Put the gloves on, you're gonna go out there and fight all you can."

TI: The principal told you this?

SK: Yeah. Seventh, when I was about seventh grade. And his name was Chet Broom. And put on the gloves and did couple of times, and I said, "I don't like to box. What the heck are we fighting for?" So we just sat there for half an hour and then went back and said, "We settled everything." So that's when that J.C. Fry, his name was J.C. Fry, the teacher, he was an elderly man, he kind of liked me after that. They had a woodshop in the back, I don't know why they had the woodshop back there, 'cause there was no instructor or anything. But by the time I was eighth grade, he used to tell me, "You go out there and make something." So I didn't have to take math or something like that. 'Cause he said, "You don't have to do that, just go out there." So I made a kitchen cabinet for my mother. But they had just hand tools, they didn't have any kind of machine. He really liked me because I would argue with him about something, and the guys knew that if we get him talking, we won't have to take certain tests or anything. So used to always tell him, "Ask him something." He, I remember talking about that time when communism and Germany had dictatorship, he used to tell me, "Mark my words, someday there won't be any communism. There won't be any dictators. Democracy is the best way to go, but," he says, "United States is gradually going socialism, and that's going to ruin this country." He says, "You gotta be, you gotta improve yourself individually," and stuff like that. And by god, that's what's happening now.

TI: But what was interesting is, so your friends had you kind of engage him in these, sort of, long conversations so that he would forget about giving tests and things. And he enjoyed these conversations.

SK: Yeah, he used to like it.

TI: And so how did you get educated about things like communism, fascism, things like that? How did you engage him in all these conversations?

SK: Because that's... those days, toward the end when I was graduating, McCarthyism and all that kind of stuff, I'd ask him about it, and he would get talking. Before you know it, he likes to talk, he's an elderly man. It was interesting.

TI: And when you did this, was this with the whole classroom just listening as you would do this?

SK: Yeah. And two classes there, seventh and eighth graders together.

TI: Oh, interesting.

SK: There was, I was the only Japanese boy. There was three other Japanese girls.