Densho Digital Archive
Manzanar National Historic Site Collection
Title: Clyde Tichenor Interview
Narrator: Clyde Tichenor
Interviewer: Kristen Luetkemeier
Location: Independence, California
Date: March 23, 2012
Densho ID: denshovh-tclyde_2-01-0008

<Begin Segment 8>

KL: Did you move up in rank at the Manzanar contest?

CT: I just moved up in rank after the war and we got back to doing regular week to week judo and stuff like that. Because of the things I had done, abilities I had achieved, they raised my rank up to black belt, and eventually up. The United States Judo Association also were the ones that raised my rank to fourth degree.

KL: I've read that sometimes in judo contests there are maybe three matches or four matches happening at the same time. Was that true of Manzanar, was there space?

CT: Yes, not three or four, but two maybe. If it was a more important match between black belts or somebody who was really special, there wouldn't be. But otherwise, these things were fairly common, and so there would be maybe two guys, four people engaged in judo.

KL: Do you remember watching any of those black belt matches, or any really exciting matches at Manzanar?

CT: Yeah, well, I witnessed a few, and I like I say is, everything happens all of a sudden. Unless you're talking about mat work in judo, where you're holding somebody down on the mat.

KL: No, I was curious about during a contest.

CT: That's slow and everything. But the standing judo is always, either nothing's happening or somebody is flying through the air.

KL: Was there a highlight or a most exciting match of the Manzanar contest?

CT: Yeah, but I think those matches were between the Japanese who were already up there, because they were the ones with the higher black belt degrees. I don't think I hardly knew anybody except Jack Sergil, who was higher than a second degree black belt at those times.

KL: It sounds like it was exciting to get to watch that level of competition.

CT: Yeah. It was more exciting if you were working with one of them and you suddenly found yourself flying through the air.

KL: I saw some pictures, I think, from that competition, I'll show you, here's the dojo.

CT: Yeah, that's the building with the open sides. There's panels that close up the sides. And, of course, there's always zillions of kids that are involved, and they take up a lot of time and space.

KL: And then I saw pictures also of Jack Sergil and others back by the mountains. Do you remember the mountains during the tournament, during the contest?

CT: The...

KL: The mountains at camp. Looks like Jack Sergil with a dog and he's back in front of the mountains. Did you guys go hiking or anything?

CT: No.

KL: Do you remember any other parts of the camp other than the dojo?

CT: No, we were there for that and went to... well, we went and ate somewhere, and it wasn't there because that was all mat on the floor. But I can't tell you, it was just some building.

KL: All of you together?

CT: Yes. We were always together. We didn't get any strange looks from people in the camp. They more or less accepted the fact we considered them normal like they did us, so our relations were on a very normal plane.

KL: I've read that judo participants in Manzanar, the Japanese American participants, became part of a peacekeeping group. Did you have any sense of how judo fit in to life in camp?

CT: No, no. I don't think... maybe Jack Sergil had done some of that, but it didn't include the rest of us particularly. Because after all, we were at best just young adults, and he was like twenty years older than we were. He accepted us on a judo plane, but on an adult plane, I don't know.

KL: What do you know about...

CT: He told me... you make me think of Jack when he was a policeman, and he told me several instance while he was a policeman where he had to use judo. And one in particular he told me, which was very amusing, was he got out to arrest some, in this case it was a black guy in a neighborhood like that, and this black guy I guess had been a boxer or something like that. And he was going to square away into a boxing stance to take Jack on. And Jack said when he took the step forward for the stance, he just said, "I swept his foot out from under him, he landed on the ground looking up at me and he says, 'Man, you do the ask and I'll do the answering.'" [Laughs]

KL: Any others that you remember about him using judo as a police officer?

CT: That's the only... I remember him telling me about that, it was so funny.

KL: Well, it sounds like he thought it was usual --

CT: But it's typical of judo in action, especially to someone that doesn't know anything about it. And I've worked with a boxer one time, he wanted to see what boxing could do with judo, and I wanted to see without us beating on each other what judo could do with a boxer. And the sum total of it was every time he got near me, I'd take his feet out from under him. He said he had a hard time getting where he could really take a blow in, because judo emphasized so much the ability to sweep people's feet out and off balance, their body.

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