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WI: But I sort of went off track. You were asking me about my growing up in San Francisco. And we would do Sunday things. My sister wasn't born yet, and I must have been like two or three, four, where we would dress in our... in San Francisco, people dressed up back then. So we would get in our Sunday best, hop in the car and drive out to Golden Gate Park and maybe go to the Japanese tea garden, or the Fleishhacker Zoo. Or one of my favorite spots was Playland at the beach where they had the roller coasters and the concessions and all that. So that was real great memories.

And then, of course, one of the other things that we used to do is, as a family, is walk down to Japantown, which was actually two blocks, and we would go to our favorite chop suey restaurant and have our Sunday dinner, and then we would all walk to our neighborhood theater. And then there we would see our usual, the whole feature with a cartoon and newsreel. But I remember this one movie excursion. I was sitting there in the theater, big screen, and in living color, suddenly, seven little men marched across the screen singing, "Heigh-Ho, Heigh-Ho, it's off to work we go." And I said, "That's it, that's what I want to be." Not one of the seven little men, but an animator, cartoonist. That's when I really knew for sure in my mind -- I was five -- that this is it. And from that point on, I just drew voraciously, collected Disney books, and whatever Disney, it was in my blood.

KL: What did your parents think? Did they know?

WI: Well, they of course, like all parents, they had pride in the fact that I showed some talent in something. And being an artist, cartoonist, I used go get good marks in school, teacher's comments on the report cards always says that Willie was always drawing and was very good. Only time that didn't really go was after American school, it was pretty much in our community that we would attend Japanese language school. So from, between three when American school let out, four o'clock, we would be at the Buddhist Church and the Japanese classes there. And that's where it was like night and day. Because in American school you just had a good time. Once you got into Japanese school, your hands were folded. And when the teacher came in, you bowed, and all the strict whatever. Then you open your book to your assignment. I couldn't do funny little drawings or sketches. If I was caught doing that, the ruler would rap across my knuckles. But in American school I drew cartoons and did whatever I wanted, went to the easel and painted, whatever, just that freedom.

KL: What was the temple that the Japanese school was in?

WI: Yeah, it was the San Francisco Buddhist church, which was known as Bukkyokai, B-U-K-K-Y-O-K-A-I.

KL: Did you guys attend services there?

WI: Yes. Actually, my parents is of Buddhist... but when I was in high school, with all my friends and all that, the Church of Christ, which was a Presbyterian church in our community, I was a member of that, and later became Baptized as a Presbyterian. But still the Buddhist thing is kind of the family thing. Whenever my parents passed, my uncles and all that, all of our services was held at a Buddhist church, that same one in San Francisco.

KL: There was a minister there, I think it's the same one, it's the big one that's now the headquarters of the Buddhist Churches, USA, and it's right there in Japantown. And the minister there before the war was a guy named Shinjo Nagatomi who went to Manzanar. Did you know the Nagatomis at all?

WI: No.

KL: I was just curious.

WI: Yeah, right.

KL: What was the name of that movie theater where you saw, where you guys used to go where you saw Snow White?

WI: It was the New Fillmore theater on Fillmore Street.

KL: And what was your favorite restaurant, do you remember its name, the chop suey restaurant?

WI: Fei Ling's, I think it was.

KL: And what about your school, what was its name?

WI: My grammar school was Raphael Weill, and after the war I went to Pacific Heights, which was like a middle school. Raphael Weill was a grammar school. This school still exists today and it's now called Rosa Parks School. And then about a block from that was the local YMCA, which was for basically our community, Japantown community. And so after the war, that's one of the places that we all sort of met and migrated to. Because the return of our friends were spotty, some of them relocated back to New Jersey, some of them went elsewhere. And so our old San Francisco friends, we would sort of get together at the Y, which is where Shig and I got together. And then later when the community formed the Boy Scout Troop 12, which is an old charter. That Boy Scout Troop 12 was chartered in San Francisco's Japantown sometime in the '20s. And they had a drum and bugle corps, which we revived after the war.

KL: Were you a Boy Scout before the war?

WI: No, I was too young.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.