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KL: I was interested, I looked at their website last, or a couple days ago because both of you had those connections, and their website in the introductory paragraph talks about what a multicultural school they are and what a source of strength that is, and I thought that was kind of interesting several decades later.

RF: Yeah, it was very multi-ethnic as well as economic.

KL: Even in the '40s.

RF: Yeah. You had people like famous movie stars graduating from Uni. I'm not sure they attended school, but they graduated. Like Gail Russell, there was a Benny Bartlett, Marilyn Monroe was a classmate at Emerson junior high school before she became famous. Who else? Quite a few.

KL: Did you learn any Spanish when you were growing up?

RF: Oh, yes. Mr. Jiminez was my Spanish teacher, and in fact, to this day, I still speak Spanish better than I can Japanese. In fact, we got along famously in Spain when I went to Spain because I was able to use my Spanish. But in Japan, when I tried to use my Japanese, all kinds of strange things happened.

KL: So you studied Spanish in high school?

RF: Oh, yeah.

KL: Did you speak it with friends?

RF: I believe I did. I've forgotten a lot of it, but I know enough to get around like in places like Mexico or Spain.

KL: What other... I wanted to ask you too about from before you went to Manzanar, both sports and your involvement with the Buddhist temple. Did you have any sports memories of your own that stood out besides cheerleading?

RF: Well, no, I don't, because I wasn't that good at sports. I enjoyed sports and played a lot of things like baseball, football, basketball with my peers, but not in high school. I was on a B team baseball team. But I didn't excel at the sport like my brother did. And I was on the track team, didn't do very well, I was on the C team. But our group of Japanese boys, we always played football, basketball and baseball together. We enjoyed that a lot, but it was not what you'd call real top competitive sports, you're playing with your peers. And we continued on it, and that's how the Vandals, the club Vandals was formed, because our primary goal was to play sports. And we continued on in camp as a team, although they lived in the western part of the camp, the higher side, and we for some reason were settled in the eastern side close to the highway where I was, most of my neighbors were from the San Fernando valley. Which was nice because I developed a whole new group of friends.

KL: Yeah, then you have two.

RF: Yeah.

KL: Did you, so you went to dances at the Buddhist church, did you go to services?

RF: Well, I didn't really go to dances. As I said, I learned dancing from my brother's girlfriends. But I didn't dance an awful lot. So the Buddhist church was a ritual going every Sunday, because my parents insisted that we go. I can't say that we were really, that I was an avid Buddhist follower, like Mary was an avid Christian.

KL: Did your mom grow up in a Buddhist family, too?

RF: Yes.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2012 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.