Densho Digital Archive - June T. Watanabe Interview (denshovh-wjune-01-0011)

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KL: This is tape number two on October the 14th, 2014, with June Watanabe, and you were saying you talked to Miye, one of your friends from Lawndale?

JW: Yeah, she called and she said, "June, remember when we used to walk?" I said, "I sure do, we were a whole load of people walking, weren't we?" She said, "Yeah." She said, "You know, there's only you and me. Out of that whole bunch, they're all gone, that used to walk to school together." And she's a couple months older than I am, she's ninety also. But that's the truth, they've all gone. It's so dad.

KL: I'm sure it is.

JW: Uh-huh, it is. And they, most of them were younger than we are. Yeah, they had cancer, cancer is terrible.

KL: Before I turned this on, you described sort of how you would go to school. Would you repeat that?

JW: Yeah. Well, you know, there were homes all along the dirt road, and so Janice would come by, she'd be the first house on that end. She'd call Miye, Miye would come out, and then it was, "Chuck," Chuck and her sister Mary would come out. Then it was myself, "June," then it was Eda, then down the road, then it was on this side, "Amy and Fumi," and then we'd all go to school together, just blabbing around. And you know, we lived on, it's now Marine Street, Avenue I think, but in the old days it was called Compton Boulevard. One day -- and I can't believe we did this -- one day, as we were going along, we saw this taxi on the other side of the street, and we all ran over there, and here was this taxicab driver, you know, with his cap like that, and he had a pistol, I mean, he had a hole in his head. And we said, "Oh my gosh, someone shot this man," we went merrily walking to school together. And then coming home we said, "I wonder if that man is still there." In those days, none of us had phones, none of the homes around there. But I can't believe that we did that, just saw what happened and merrily went on to school expecting it, to see this man still dead in that cab.

KL: Was he still there?

JW: No.

KL: That's so out of the ordinary to see that.

JW: It is. But I can't believe we were that unattentive or what, I don't know. It's just dumb that we didn't do anything. I guess we didn't want to get delayed for school or something.

KL: Or maybe you didn't know what to do when things are so out of the ordinary.

JW: Or maybe we thought, well, that's nothing, a guy got shot in his head. [Laughs] That's that, let's go on. But now it's a big issue, you know.