<Begin Segment 6>

KP: In junior high school, what were some of your, more favorite subjects in school? What did you like doing in school?

TF: Well, I went to Berendo, and since we lived a half a block away from it, I thought it was pretty good. I didn't... I don't think that we recall anything extraordinary there, other than the fact that after school, they used to have a coach there, you might say they left the place open 'til nine, so it was pretty good there.

KP: Doing sports?

TF: Well, you know, they have pick up games and everything else, where it was after school events. But in school it was just regular things. I guess it's just a general type of things because there's teachers you like and the teachers you didn't really care for. There was one doctor who was teaching there, insists that they call him Doctor, and therefore you get the idea you don't want to call him that and this kind of stuff. I didn't think it was anything unusual, other than the fact that you kind of get the feeling that there's more of an expression in terms of ethnicity, where someone mentioned you as being other than the group, that now you're a "Jap" or something like that, because I guess in grammar school, nobody had any fights. But in the junior high school, I guess I wasn't strong enough to get in a fight. But they could hear comments from others, and that was okay.

KP: What sports in particular did you like? When you were, after school pick up games...

TF: Well, I really wasn't much of an athlete, but I used to be a pitcher on the softball team. And so that was okay, because when you're a kid, if you're a pitcher, you're, quote, "one of the better ones," I think. Otherwise you're in the right field. [Laughs]

KP: That's where I was.

TF: Yeah. So it's just a matter of playing with whoever were there, and it seemed like there was always somebody older to tell you how. Although Gene Mauch went to the same junior high school.

KP: Who was that?

TF: Gene Mauch, he used to be in the majors. He coached also. I don't know if he was a big name, but he was a big name in junior high school because he played with the American Legion ball. And he was in the majors as, I think he was managing or coaching also. But he was one of the nice guys that got big name, but he still remembered us little guys.

KP: Any other stories you remember about that kind of north Los Angeles area while you were growing up before the war?

TF: All I know was that I used to go to the movie because there used to be the Victoria Theater there, and he used to hire us to distribute the pamphlets. And he gives you a route and you do it, and then I found out at that time that something so simple as that, people are different. Because some of the guys wouldn't deliver it. They act like they do and then they throw it away, but they get the passes. So I kind of thought that's terrible. But I didn't have enough guts to say anything about that, because my folks told me, "You're gonna have to trust people and you're gonna have to be trustworthy. So if you're going to promise to do something, you're expected to do that and not start fudging like that." And I noticed that in junior high school, there was a little more fudging of other aspects, too.

KP: Did you start high school in that area before you went to camp?

TF: Oh, yeah, see, now, that was the part that I was going to go, because high school, when my sister went to high school, they went to L.A. High School, which was about three miles down the road, and you take a bus. By the time I got to high school, I call it de facto segregation because the school boundaries are now shifted so that we had to go to John H. Francis Polytechnic High School, which is downtown-ish. And we had to take two buses, we had to transfer twice, and then walk another couple blocks just to get to school. And that school had a lot of Orientals, lot of minorities. And I didn't really fit there, because I hated the idea of having to transfer. And then when all we had to do was jump on the bus, go the other way, and it's one shot. So that's where it kind of gave me the idea that, at that time I didn't realize such things as de facto segregation, it kind of dawned on me that there's this kind of pattern around. It's just like where we're living, the reason we're living in this kind of area is because you aren't free to live elsewhere. And you learn these things as you grow up, though. And I think I mentioned that as I'm growing up in L.A., I really didn't like it. I'm not sure we were poor. I think if we were rich, I think I would have liked it. Because you can like anything if you're rich. [Laughs] Since we weren't rich, I can't tell you that side.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.