Densho Digital Archive - George H. Morishita Interview (denshovh-mgeorge

<Begin Segment 24>

KL: We're gonna hire you as a ranger. That was a brilliant transition, because I wanted to ask you about judo also at Manzanar.

GM: What's that?

KL: Roy Murakami whose father ran the judo dojo, yeah?

GM: Yeah. Thoughts about him?

KL: Yeah, you were involved in judo, right?

GM: Yeah, I took it when I was a kid, and I was mentioning it, I don't know if I said this. One day our Block 5 guys were coming back from near the gate, and Block 4, near Block 4 I think it was, there was a weather little box, I guess, thermometer, barometer and all that, and had a little box covering that. And for some reason we started throwing rocks at it from a distance, and then we were laughing as we got... all of a sudden we finally smashed it down. And Mr. Murakami, Sensei Murakami, and apparently I was ditching judo for a while, and he comes, and I was the only one from my group that was taking judo. My friend Eddie took kendo, yeah. And then he goes, "Morishita-kun," he goes... he didn't say, "What are you doing?" or anything like that, he says, "Oh, I see you're healthy, you're not sick anymore. So we're going to see you at the dojo Monday?" I go, "Yes, sir." So I go in and he whispers to a brown belt guy, and for the next, seemed like ten minutes anyway, I'm flipping all over. [Laughs] The sensei told him to, "Just flip him all over," and I still remember that. I know that Roy Murakami's son became a judo expert. And I only got into the newspaper when I was in Tucson where he was teaching the L.A. police department or something like that, or the North Hollywood police.

KL: There was a connection, yeah.

GM: Something like that.

KL: What else do you remember about Seigo Murakami, Murakami-sensei? What was he like, or did you have any other...

GM: I just remember he was one of the nice, he was not scary or anything like that. I know there was one...

KL: Tashima-sensei, I wanted to ask about him, too.

GM: When I was little, he scared the heck out of me.

KL: Tashima-sensei?

GM: Because one winter, the dojo, they opened the doors, and we were freezing. And he came up with this one boy that was a little younger than me, and he said, he was shaking, he was so cold. He said, "Are you cold?" He said, "Yes." Wham. Wow, and the guy falls down and gets up again, "You're a coward or weakling, are you cold?" And so he says, "No." Wham, "Don't lie." So god, I hope he... but when I became a little older, by thirteen I think I dropped out. But he was pretty nice. And he was telling us, "You have to work at it."

KL: Tashima was nicer?

GM: Yeah, I thought so. But the first time, he scared the heck out of me.

KL: What was his relationship with Murakami-sensei?

GM: That I don't really know. I don't know who was the head instructor. I just know that Murakami-sensei, I remember him, Tashima, and I think there might have been more than two, but those were the two I remember. I'm trying to think... that's the only thing I can remember.

KL: How'd you start taking judo?

GM: I must have been about eleven years old and my father first took me to the kendo place. And I'll be honest, I saw this one armament, and I thought, wow, that's nice, black one and all that. And the instructor, he proceeded to show me a pretty junky one. And so I told my father, "I don't think I want to do kendo, I think I want to do judo." And then my mom, son of a gun, she wouldn't buy me a judogi at first, she made it. Well, heck, it didn't take long for the guys to rip it off, and I come home and it's all shredded, so she finally broke down.

KL: Did she have a sewing machine?

GM: I'm not sure. Yeah, I don't remember, but maybe we did. Maybe that was another thing that they brought, she was allowed to bring in, I'm not sure. I'm not sure if she did it with him or something like that, but it didn't last very long." And then finally gave me the money to buy a regular...

Off camera: Where did you buy them?

GM: I can't remember, it must have been from the dojo instructor. But I remember one thing, near the end, you know, they had the white belt, and then you wore green, and then you go purple. And I went as far as the purple belt, and then one day when I knew internment was coming, and I looked at ever purple belt guy and said, "Oh, my god, I can't beat none of them." So there was a guy in Block 6, Shiro or something, I forgot his last name. But he was about twenty-one years old. Anyway, he wasn't tall. And I told him, I said, "I have to..." so he had a good time. I would go with him to the dojo every day, and he would just do his best, practice his throws and all that, but it kind of straightened me out. And when the tournament came, I felt so good because I'm not sure if I beat somebody, but there was one guy that could just beat me with one hand if he wanted to. We were good friends, I got to know him. I held him to a tie, and I thought, wow, you know, whatever they call it, time runs out and neither one... I mean, he was doing most of the aggressing, but I was able to hold them off. And I thought, okay, it paid off, that Shiro built me up for that tournament. And I think after that I quit.

KL: Do you remember, was there... so I've heard the philosophy of judo, that it's, well, people have ideas about philosophies of judo. Was there any instruction about sort of a philosophy of judo?

GM: Well, it was to build your physical strength, mental and all that, because that's one thing about Tashima-sensei I was impressed with. One day and adult guy came, I'm not sure if he was brown belt, he might have been. And he did a, some kind of move that, I forgot the expression they used. And Tashima-sensei saw that and he, in front of the whole dojo, he just screamed at this guy for using that hold in front of kids. He didn't want no kids to learn those kind of things. It was a deadly move, I guess, you could kill somebody or something like that, or break somebody's bone. I just remember the expression that he used, like I forgot the rod they used, yakyu or something like that. But he just yelled at this guy. And this man must have been in his mid-twenties or older and I thought wow, you know. This is why, years later when I was in Phoenix and at a workshop, and me and this guy, we were going for a walk after dinner, he said, "Hey, karate." I said, "Karate? I'll be darned." And we went in there, I said, "That ain't karate." He said, "What do you mean?" I said, "They're kicking the heck out of each other. You're not supposed to do that." And I said I understand that you're supposed to be able to kill somebody, but not touch him. You lose point if you touch them, that's what I was told when I was a kid. And you had to learn to be so skillful that you could stop yourself before you hit him in a tournament. But the referee could tell by the...

KL: In terms of judo or in terms of karate?

GM: This was karate, yeah. And then I remembered that, and these guys were banging each other up and all that. And then I thought about this Tashima-sensei getting mad at this man for... because we just learned certain throws, you know.

KL: Was that man a visitor to Manzanar or did he live there?

GM: He must have lived there, yeah. He was a Japanese guy, Nisei guy, but he was brown belt. I remember he was a brown belt. I'm just guessing his age, twenty or thirty.

KL: Do you remember any tournaments with Caucasian visitors to Manzanar?

GM: I just remember early on this Caucasian boy came, he might have been one of the... you know. And he hadn't learned yet how to fall. And he started off with two senseis or somebody holding that belt, and he'd fly over it. And the first he landed, boom, like I would when you take a dive in the water, belly flop or something like that. And then there was naturally laughter and all that, and then one of the guys showed him how to do it. Yeah, I remember that. But that was the only time I remember.

KL: Do you remember any... we don't have very much documentation at all about the kendo teaching space. Do you have a visual memory of what looked like in there?

GM: Vaguely. It was, the firebreak was east of Block 11, was that it? Am I correct there, or further... no, maybe further north, I'm not sure.

KL: It's a little bit west of the judo...

GM: There was the huge trees, when I went there to visit Manzanar I was looking for those trees and it was all gone. But there was just that one area where, I don't know what kind of trees they were, very large trees, and that's where they had the kendo thing.

KL: Was it in a barrack?

GM: No, it was open. And the thing, it was not like the judo, it was a covered one, if I remember. I thought it was... well, it could have been, maybe not Block 11, a little further, I'm not sure. There's nothing?

KL: There's not a lot of documentation about it. If I find somebody who went in there, I always ask, "What did it look like?" "What do you remember?"

GM: Yeah, I just know one guy that took everybody, this friend Eddie, he took kendo, I remember.