Densho Digital Archive
Japanese American National Museum Collection
Title: Wally Yonamine Interview
Narrator: Wally Yonamine
Interviewers: Art Hansen (primary); John Esaki (secondary)
Location: Honolulu, Hawaii
Date: December 16, 2003
Densho ID: denshovh-ywally-01-0021

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AH: There was still a lot of anti-Japanese feeling, especially in areas like San Francisco, and this was pretty close after the end of the war. Did you feel any of that when you were playing there, either from the public, generally, or from... because you were the first person of color to break into the pro ranks in football.

WY: No, as far as prejudice and things like that, I don't think I saw anything like that. The players were real nice to me. But I know the Japanese people that came out of the camp, you know, naturally, they used to, a lot of times they used to call them "Jap" and things like that. But as far as I was concerned, you know, like when we travel, go to New York, Chicago, whatever -- and stay in a hotel, we had a guy, Joe Perry and another black guy, two or three blacks. They couldn't stay in the same hotel that the whites stayed. They had to go to second-rate hotels or maybe stay at a relative's place or something like that. But I stayed in the same hotel. My roommate was a white guy. He and I was roommate.

AH: Who was that?

WY: Eddie Carr, Eddie Carr.

AH: Good, you pulled it out.

WY: Yeah, Eddie Carr.

AH: You know, just in looking at this and doing the research on it, in the year 1947, it was such a groundbreaking year for sports in terms of not only Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in baseball, but then you in football, and then Iwata Masaki, another Japanese American in basketball. Were you conscious of the fact that you were a groundbreaker at that time?

WY: No, never, because, you know why? When I went to the States like that, see, Hawaii is a place that everybody's the same. Could be Japanese, Chinese, haole, Hawaiian -- everybody equal. So when I went there, I didn't feel that I'm a Japanese or anything like that. So, when I went there, I thought I'm American. So nothing, things like that didn't bother me at all But, when I see the Japanese people that came out of the camps and they would call them "Jap" and things like that. That I saw.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2003 Japanese American National Museum. All Rights Reserved.