<Begin Segment 12>

TI: Well, how about in school, did you do sports? Were there any sports that you did in school?

FO: Well, not in grammar school, but high school, yeah. High school, I ran a little track.

TI: And what event did you do in track?

FO: High jump and hurdles.

TI: So you're not, you're not that tall.

FO: I know it. I chose the craziest thing. I'm short-legged, and I did the hurdles and high jump. [Laughs]

TI: And so you would compete against Caucasians?

FO: Yeah, against each different schools, yeah.

TI: And how would you do against...

FO: [Laughs] Yeah.

TI: But then for high jump, you must have been a good leaper. You probably had a good spring?

FO: Well, that's the whole trouble. Our coach, he was just interested in football, so he never trained us, you know. And I was still doing the old fashioned high jump, then other schools, they were all doing the western roll that was getting popular then.

TI: Oh, so you would do the scissors kind of...

FO: Yeah, scissors, that's right. Yeah. And then they do the western roll, yeah.

TI: And so it was hard for you to compete. Because even though you could jump high, probably, the other guys had better, better technique.

FO: Yeah.

TI: So were you able to, when you saw the other track people doing the western roll, did you ever try to do that?

FO: Yeah, but you've gotta have a coach to teach you, I guess, yeah.

TI: Or else you might get hurt. 'Cause you'd have to, yeah, when you roll, I guess you would fall on your back, and if you didn't do that right, it could be hard. That's good.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Watsonville - Santa Cruz JACL. All Rights Reserved.