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

<Begin Segment 7>

KL: Tell us about that neighborhood that you grew up. You mentioned your mom was a barber and she had Mexican customers. What neighborhood in L.A. did you grow up in?

GM: Well, they call that flats. When I was a kid, it was Tortilla Flats, and a little before me it was Russian Flats. It was real interesting. My daughter lives in San Francisco, and her boyfriend, well, they're just like husband and wife, but his great grandfather homesteaded a county north, the Napa, Sonoma area, and he had about three thousand acres and all that. I think the family still has it. And the first time I went there after my first wife died, Thanksgiving I went up there, and one of my Pa's uncle through marriage grew up in L.A., Boyle Heights. And when I came there, he says, "Hey, George," and he was a lot older than me, he's in his nineties now. He said, "Maya tells me that you were from East Boyle Heights." I said, "Well, no, actually, I was born down in Flats," and he got all excited. He said, "My god, I haven't heard that since I lived there. That was a rough Russian neighborhood." I said, "Yeah, there was about ten, fifteen percent Russians when I was growing up there, but it was Mexicans." And then when me and my wife moved to Tucson in '68, we had met this couple, my younger sister-in-law's first boss, who was an engineer for Southern Cal Edison, Mr. Lummis. I don't know if you've ever driven the Pasadena freeway, or what they call the Pasadena...

KL: I don't know either, that's kind of sad. I'm always just following my GPS when I'm down there.

GM: One of these, before I stop off, there's a historical site, historical house, Lummis House, and that's this Mr. Lummis's family. But anyway, they came to Tucson because he had ties in Tucson, too. And then called me and my wife and kids down to the hotel and went out to eat. And one day we're talking and Mr. Lummis says, "I was born near Fifth and Central." I said, "Good god." And he goes, "Hey, George, that was a nice neighborhood then," because he was forty years older than me. Then his wife tells me, "I was born on Utah off of First." I said, "No, no, there's no way you could have been born there." She went, "Well, why not?" I said, "I was born on First off of Utah. There was no white people there." "Well, we moved out when the foreigners started coming in." I said, "Oh, you mean the Mexicans?" And she said, "Mexicans? There were no Mexicans." I go, "Eastern Europeans like Russians? They used to wear those peasant clothes and all that?" She goes, "Yeah, they were from Eastern Europe," it had changed that much. By the '30s it was mostly Mexicans.

KL: Did people mix very much socially?

GM: I don't recall that. But I don't recall any trouble, because I know, I hear this even to this day sometimes, Roosevelt High School, that's where I graduated from. Back then there was... when I went there, there were still a lot of Caucasians or Jewish people, Russian people, and then mostly Mexicans. And then there were some Asians, Japanese and probably Chinese, and then blacks. But everybody that I talked to that went there, they say, "That was a great school." There was never any racial kind of problem stuff like that there.

KL: You know, there's a teacher at Roosevelt High School now who brings a group of students every year to Manzanar. So I'm, that's another thing I'm excited about, having this recorded actually, because they, those students, they met a former student from Roosevelt who had also been at Manzanar, and it was like they had seen Michael Jackson or something, they were just in awe. What was your elementary school's name?

GM: Utah grade school. Yeah, it's still there, I think. In fact, in recent years I took a drive through, I said, "Oh, it had nice housing around there."