<Begin Segment 13>

AH: Did you have some exploits when you were even a freshman at Lahainaluna? Were you already starting to make a splash as an athlete?

WY: Well, when I, my freshman year, sophomore year, I already made the All-Star in Maui, see. But when I was in grammar school, when I was in eighth grade, Lahainaluna already wanted me to come up and play for them already. So my soph-, my freshman year, my ninth grade, I played for Lahainaluna. And while I was in the eighth grade, they had spring training, you know. And I used to go up and work out with the regular team, the players already.

AH: And how big were you then? Because later, you got to be like 5'9" and 165 when you were at your playing weight. What were you then?

WY: I was, when I was in grammar school, I used to weigh 150, and then it went up to, when I went to Lahainaluna, I wanted to put on more weight, so I said weights, lifted weights and things like that. So I came up to about 170.

AH: And yet you wouldn't have been one of the biggest in the school with the Samoans there.

WY: Yeah, no. They had some bigger, the Samoans are bigger, much bigger.

AH: And what about the other sports, aside from football? I know you played 'em, but how were you as a basketball player?

WY: Well, I was average, I would say. I wasn't bad. Well, I was, like, for instance, when I was in the army, 1944, I was stationed at Scofield Barracks and we won the championship in that area there. And we were supposed to play against the Harlem Globetrotters, and I refused to play because I wanted to go to college. So the colonel was so mad at me that he throw me to heavy equipment and let me drive a 10-ton truck because I didn't play. But so, when I was playing basketball, I must have been a pretty good basketball player, too, because I could play against the Harlem Globetrotters at that time.

AH: Did you play guard or did you play forward or what position?

WY: I played more guard, yeah. I used to handle the ball more.

AH: So you were a dribbler and a passer.

WY: Yeah.

AH: And could you shoot well?

WY: I was a pretty good shooter. [Laughs]

AH: And then, baseball, at, when you were in Lahainaluna, was that a good sport for you at that point, too?

WY: See, when I was -- I used to, see, baseball was a sport that, even basketball was a sport that when football season's over, I just, just wanted to stay in shape. So I love football. Football was my number one sport. So when the football season's over, I'd go to baseball just to try to stay in shape and things like that, basketball, you know. But, I used to play all kind of sports, even soccer, I played soccer, too. When I was in the eighth grade, I played against the grown-ups, soccer. When I used to play football like Farrington, I kicked extra point; I could kick both left and right, extra point.

AH: Were you sports-crazy when you were in high school?

WY: Oh, desperately. I was so sports-crazy, I didn't even, never studied. [Laughs]

AH: Did you miss classes?

WY: Sometimes. Even like grammar school, I mean, when I was in the third grade, those days you go to English school and then after that you go to one hour Japanese school. But I used to cut class all the time. I didn't care to go to Japanese school, but I didn't realize that one day I would go to Japan and play ball in Japan. So when I went to Japan, naturally, I couldn't speak Japanese. I really regretted that. I wished that I had studied when I was young.

AH: I've seen in articles about you that when you went to Japan, it says, literally, that you did not know a word of Japanese. But I found in talking to people when they say that, it's not absolutely true; that you're bound to pick up some Japanese terms or could have conversations with Japanese-speaking people. Was that true of you?

WY: Yeah, just a little bit. I mean, I was, my Japanese was really bad.

AH: Was part of the reason because, unlike most Issei women, your mother was a Nisei and she could speak English?

WY: Yeah. Right. See, my father, although he spoke to us in broken English, but he never did talk to us in Japanese. And my mother, being a Nisei, my mother would talk to us in Japanese a little bit. But so, our house, we didn't talk too much Japanese in the house.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2003 Japanese American National Museum. All Rights Reserved.