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KL: Tell me about, you talk about your earliest childhood recollections being around age three or so. Tell me about the memories.

RF: Well, I don't remember much from our Idaho home, but I know that when I was about three years old, we moved down to Federal Avenue, little house on the 2100 block, 2120 was the address, I don't remember that clearly. In fact, when Mary and I got married in 1955, our first apartment was right across the street.

KL: Oh, how funny.

RF: So you always come back to your roots, I guess. But we had a lot of fun in those days. We had two great neighbors, the one neighbor next to us was a family called Law, and had two boys. And the eldest one was Bill and the youngest, his name was Gerner. And Gerner and I were about the same age, so we were playmates. Then the next house down was a family called Sutton, and he was a disabled World War I veteran. And so he didn't work, but they had two boys, the eldest was Jim and the youngest was Ted, my age. So my playmates for quite a few years, until we went to grammar school, was Gerner and Ted. And we played every time we could get together, playing in the street, and right next to us was a cornfield, we'd play hide and seek in the cornfields and had a great time pulling out cornstalk and smoking it. [Laughs]

KL: Yeah, I wondered if you would say that part out loud. My mom remembers her uncles doing that a lot. How did that go, the smoking of the corn silk?

RF: Well, I ended up being a smoker, but not because of that. It was from the army, which is where everybody learns how to smoke.

KL: Where were those two families from? Were they longtime Los Angeles, or what was their background?

RF: Well, they were there before we were, so I'm not sure where they originally came from. But Mrs. Sutton was a cook at Lark Ellen Home for Boys, which was just down the street on Olympic, couple blocks east on Olympic, which at that time was called... I believe it was called Tennessee, and it was a two-lane dirt road with high bank walls, no sidewalks. And it's, our home was on a big lot, and she was a cook there, and that has since been torn down and is now high rise buildings. It's right across the street from a Japanese community center and Japanese school.

KL: Were their families Japanese American, too?

RF: Pardon?

KL: Were your friends' families Japanese American, the Suttons and the Laws?

RF: No, no, they were Caucasian.

KL: Caucasian?

RF: Just down to earth, I'd call them Midwest type families, very down to earth. The Laws were a little more sophisticated. I remember Mrs. Law used to always wear these spectacles, hangs down on her neck like a teacher, and she was very prim and proper. They had a sheet metal business in Sawtelle. This was during the Depression, so business wasn't so good, so ultimately they left. They moved to Salinas, and I think it was to set up another sheet metal business. So that was when we departed with Gerner, but in the meantime, that was probably under five or six years... must have been a little older, in the fifth or sixth grade. So he was about ten or eleven. And the Suttons still stayed a little longer. When I was, let's see, starting junior high school, we moved to Santa Monica Boulevard, over towards Armacost, which was near Bundy. And the Suttons moved to Norco, and amazing stories they tell me. They moved to Norco, there was nothing in Norco at that time, there was no house, nothing. They just pitched a tent, and I'm not sure where they went. They just pitched a tent and started to develop whatever they could for farming. They had a cow, I remember visiting, had a cow, so we had milk from the cow, fresh milk. And it was a long time before they had a house.

KL: Did you visit when they were living in the tent?

RF: Yes, yes. Very hard life.

KL: But it sounds like a strong friendship between your families even, that you would go visit.

RF: Every birthday from that time on, I'd get a card from Ted Sutton, even today. And so that would be eighty-some odd years without fail, he would send me a birthday card. Gerner's deceased; he died quite young. He did quite well for himself as an attorney in Washington, but he died of, about middle age. But it's just amazing, the friendship you develop. Ted Sutton always remembers.

KL: Did the older brothers let you guys play with them?

RF: No, the older boys, they played with themselves and didn't want to have anything to do with us squirts. So we had our own play and they had their play. And every time we wanted to join them, they'd push us aside like older boys do. [Laughs]

KL: I read, too, that some of your neighbors were, remember that you took the Los Angeles Times at your house.

RF: Jim Sutton always reminds us. After we came back to West L.A. after the war and all, I'm not sure how we got together with the Suttons, but we did, and we had yearly reunions for a while.

KL: The whole neighborhood or just your families?

RF: No, no, just the Suttons and Bill Law and myself, Mary, and my brother, I guess, was there, too. He came in from Chicago for a couple years, and joined us on a couple reunions. And we'd talk about old times. And with aging and physical disabilities, the Suttons couldn't join us anymore, and Ted's wife passed away. He lives in Ontario. His wife passed away, and so physically we haven't been able to get together too much. But he'll still write me a birthday card. Amazing.

KL: Did other people not take the newspaper, or did they take a different one?

RF: Oh, well, Jim Sutton always reminds me that we were the only ones who took the L.A. Times.

KL: Uh-huh. Did they take a newspaper?

RF: Pardon?

KL: Did they take a different newspaper, or nobody else...

RF: No, nobody... this is Depression days, and people really couldn't afford to, luxuries like newspapers. Except my dad was not very disciplined, so he wanted the latest things. So he always had the L.A. Times, which shows his, in a way, his level of western sophistication. And we, Jim also reminds us that we had the only bike in the neighborhood. I'm not sure how he remembers that.

KL: You had one for your siblings?

RF: Yes. It was really my brother's bike.

KL: It sounds like he liked it, maybe, that's why he remembers.

RF: Yeah. [Laughs]

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2012 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.