<Begin Segment 4>

KL: Tell me more about the neighborhood. You talked about playing in the street.

RF: Well, lot of our play was around just our houses, and play on the streets, hot summer days. There wasn't much traffic, vehicles, so we'd lie in the street, pick at the tar that joins the cement streets. And lie there and have a lot of fun, and play in the cornfields. Behind Ted's house he had a willow tree. He had a shed, too, and it was a good place for a play area. And the willow tree had a treehouse, and we'd play in the treehouse and had a great time.

KL: Were the cornfields right there in your neighborhood behind the houses?

RF: In the empty lot. Because the next door house was an empty lot, and across the street there was an empty lot. And I'm not sure who the corn belonged to, I don't remember who planted it, who tended it. It was a great place to play hide and seek, crawling in and around that.

KL: A little spooky when it's not a lot of light. [Laughs]

RF: And behind our house we had a chicken coop, which a lot of houses had, grew little chickens in those days. And had pigeons as well in the coop. Of course, my job was to clean the chicken coop. And the chickens were my pets. Had names for each one, and every Sunday, I'd lose one of my pets.

KL: Did you get used to it?

RF: Well, never did. That's why I'm not much of a chicken fan right now, because I got kind of squeamish about all that, especially the way they had to kill the chicken and wring their neck and chop the head off and with the carcass flop all over.

KL: Yeah. I can see how as a kid that would be kind of...

RF: Dunk the carcass in hot boiling water so you can pull the feathers out, and the odor that comes from that is just terrible. [Laughs] Then, of course, chicken dinner.

KL: Have you kept chickens as an adult ever?

RF: Pardon?

KL: Did you have chickens later in life ever?

RF: Yes, I do, and I still do, but I'm not a fan of chicken. I don't go out of my way to have chicken. So I'm not a Kentucky Colonel fan.

KL: Yeah. Well, California, you're probably pretty safe. I wanted to talk about your dad's eventual work as a gardener, too. How did he start in that field, do you think?

RF: I don't recall how, but everyone in West L.A. was practically either farming or gardening, mostly gardeners, because it was a city area. There were farms around the area. I imagine that's probably why we moved to Sawtelle, so he could pursue that as a living. And, of course my brother being old enough, he'd go on weekends to help, Saturdays. And when I was old enough, I started to help on Saturdays also. And it was kind of awkward because my recollection is that his customers were in Westwood and Beverly Hills, Holmby Hills. Of course, a lot of my schoolmates when I went to Emerson junior high school in Westwood, there was no junior high school at that time in Sawtelle. A lot of the classmates in Westwood at Emerson Junior High School lived in Westwood, Holmby Hills, very wealthy areas, and they were my classmates who I would also see on Saturdays while I was helping with that gardening. So it was a little awkward. And the same thing continued in University High School, because that's sort of the whole area as well. So a lot of students came, the Japanese and Latinos came from Sawtelle, very wealthy Caucasians from Westwood Holmby Hills, Brentwood. So it was quite a mixture of a variety of economic and racial classes.

KL: Did you speak to each other if you would see each other on weekends at your work and stuff?

RF: It was a very friendly basis, on the surface anyway. It was kind of an interesting lifestyle because I had a lot of playmates from those areas.

KL: You don't seem very social. [Laughs]

RF: Well... me?

KL: Yeah, I'm teasing you.

RF: Well, I had a lot of playmates who were from those areas during school periods. And, of course, you go back to Sawtelle, and after school and on weekends, your playmates were all Japanese. So it was kind a mixture of myself swinging from one group of friends to another group of friends. But I guess I inherited a lot of my dad's... what do you call it, tricks of doing things differently. So I learned how to dance, and I remember dancing with a lot of Caucasian girls from the other side of the tracks, having a lot of fun. In fact, I was invited to a dance in Westwood by the same group of Caucasian friends, and I was the only Japanese from the other side of the tracks going to the dance.

KL: Was it in one of their houses?

RF: No, it was a dance studio. Because in... people that were wealthy enough to go dance classes and things like that. I learned it from two of my brother's lady friends, girlfriends, who taught me how to dance at the Buddhist church. [Laughs] Simple dancing like the foxtrot.

KL: Did your brother mind? By that point you were older, you could play with, you could learn to dance from his girlfriend, it was okay?

RF: Well, no, I wasn't playing with these girls, I was just, they were dancing, so I asked them to teach me.

KL: So you learned at the temple.

RF: Yeah. And we're still dancing, right? I dance five days a week now.

KL: Oh, that's great. What kind of dancing do you do? Do you do salsa?

RF: Ballroom dancing and swing dancing. I primarily go just because of my health. I'm diabetic, doing a lot of exercise is one of the best ways, I love to dance.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2012 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.