Densho Digital Archive - Kaz Yamamoto Interview (denshovh-ykaz-01-0007)

<Begin Segment 7>

RP: What were some of your interests? Did you have any hobbies growing up?

KY: Getting what?

RP: Any hobbies or interests when you were growing up?

KY: When I was growing up?

RP: Uh-huh.

KY: Well, living in the beach city of Santa Monica, we naturally liked to go fishing a lot. And so that's what we did most of the time. We tried to go fishing a lot. And I used to take what they call a Half-day Boat and Half-day Boat, and you get on the boat and go out not too far and then there was a barge out there, off Santa Monica, there was a barge. You can go to the barge and fish off that barge, and catch all the mackerels you want. But the interest was mostly on fishing that I did. And other than that, all the other sports we enjoyed. My friends that I grew up with enjoyed all the different kinds of sports. And so we would get together and have fun playing the different sports. So, that's all I can say is we enjoyed our friends that I grew up with.

RP: You said you were living on Sixteenth Street in Santa Monica?

KY: Uh-huh.

RP: Was that predominately a Caucasian area or were there a number of Japanese families?

KY: It was mostly Caucasian. There was a mixture of Spanish people. But it was mostly Caucasians and the place that we lived in, there were a lot of Japanese that mingled in the neighborhood. So that's why I got to know a lot of my friends who were Japanese and we became good friends. We didn't, we didn't mingle too much with Caucasian friends because the only Caucasian friends that I knew were in public school. And after that it was Japanese school and all our activities at Japanese school was about Japanese things. Like my sister, she did flower arrangements and all the different Japanese things. Like she used to play this like a harp, only it's long on the floor.

RP: Koto?

KY: Koto, yeah. She did that. So they were all things that were Japanese. But for us, the boys, there wasn't anything "Japanesey" like that. It was normal American activities. But... nothing special in... I can't say that all we did was things Japanese. It wasn't. It was all American activities.

RP: How about social life? Did you, did you go to movies or go to dances or any of those type of things?

KY: No. Only thing that you do in the public school, like in high school, junior high school and high school, you would do dancing. But that's the normal thing. But other than that there was nothing you can point a finger at and say that because it's Japanese, that's what I took. The only thing that would be Japanese would be kendo or judo or some martial arts. But, they didn't have all the martial arts in Santa Monica. All they had was kendo.