Densho Digital Archive - Clyde Tichenor Interview (denshovh-tclyde

<Begin Segment 9>

KL: When you got back to Los Angeles, did Jack talk at all about the fallout from the newspapers criticizing the tournament or the response of the --

CT: Well, of course, we were getting the same papers. And it was interesting lesson in what papers were truthful and what papers weren't, because you were an expert on one side yourself, and you could see what papers, without knowing what was going on, went down the middle, which was reasonable. And these other papers parroted this one supervisor that made a big to-do about it, and dreamt up the craziest fallacies.

KL: Within the police department, the police commissioner?

CT: I don't think the commissioner himself... I don't know as that guy was a commissioner or an advisor to the commissioner, but he was in the government. And you have to read the newspaper things there and you find out he didn't know what the hell he was talking about from the word go.

KL: Was it the Examiner that covered a lot, carried a lot of that?

CT: Yeah, then, and they considered, he considered judo a religion or something like that, and the bowing especially was a foreign kind of obeisance, which a lot of people didn't understand. That's about all I can tell you.

[Interruption]

KL: We were talking about Jack Sergil's kind of reaction to the competition at Manzanar in the newspapers, and Jack Sergil's response to that controversy. Did Sergil talk with you students about the newspaper coverage at all, or the controversy?

CT: Well, of course, as I said, it was one thing to live through it and have these newspapers come out talking about something you really knew about. And very few of us know much about the things the newspapers do write about. And when you really know the facts like we did in this case, I think it was the Los Angeles Daily News, one of them was very, pretty much factual, one newspaper was, and the other two of them were, they'd print anything that anybody said about, worrying about the facts or anything else. The more horrendous they could make it, like women students exchanging holds with Japanese internees, in those words, is an example of the... at least several women, I remember, that were in our group doing judo like the rest of us.

KL: Was there an audience for that? Do you think there were people who took that seriously?

CT: Oh, yes. Because several people asked me about it, and I'd have to kind of take it, straighten them out on what it was really all about. It was just amazing how a newspaper can manipulate a story. It was not false, it was if you put exaggerations in the wrong place, people get the wrong idea, it's that simple, which is what they did.

KL: What were the other two big papers?

CT: Oh, the Times, the Daily News, and the Herald Examiner, I think, were the three papers.

KL: What was Sergil's response?

CT: Well, disgust at the to-do that they were making about what was really a simple exercise in an athletic activity. I don't do other sports because I did, what, sixty years of doing judo, and that was the sport that I was involved in and that I'm an expert on. But the other sports just don't have anything that interest me much.

KL: Are you aware of whether Jack Sergil changed career fields, of whether this Manzanar tournament and the newspaper had any coverage that had any effect on his decision to leave the police force?

CT: Well, I guess it did. But I think what happened was when he got working with Jim Cagney, as a matter of fact, I can remember the night that Jim Cagney showed up at the dojo and sat in the bleachers watching us, because I didn't know anything about that, and I don't even know whether at that point Jack knew anything about it. But all I know was one night, in the bleachers, which were like steps that we had that went into the dojo on Thirty-fifth Place there, one night there was Jim Cagney sitting there watching us, and he did it two times and then Jack got to talking with him and everything. And that's when he and Jack got in... what Cagney was looking for was somebody to take the place of this Japanese police captain in the movie Blood on the Sun. And when he saw Jack and what he was doing with the judo and stuff like that, he hired Jack to teach him judo enough so that he could really do something, and also learn to participate in the action of the judo. And so they made Jack up as much more Japanese looking and everything, and he played the part of Captain Oshima and got in a to-do with Cagney on it. But afterwards, as I understand it, Kenneth Kuniyuki, who was one of the sixth degree black belts and the only Japanese I never knew people didn't like, his wife was a worker for the family, Cagney's family. She was, I don't know, a cook or something like that around the house, and her ex-husband came and caused problems at the Cagneys' house, and I guess Jack had to kind of evict him. And that must have been something to see, because this particular Japanese guy was a real expert at judo.

KL: Her ex-husband was Kuniyuki?

CT: Kuniyuki is his name, Kenneth Kuniyuki. And I never met him, but he was originally the teacher of Seinan Dojo, and he didn't come back after the war. At any rate, then Cagney I guess became interested enough in it, so he sort of hired Jack to come in and tutor him.

KL: Do you think she connected them?

CT: After the picture, after the picture, teach him more judo. And Jack ended up as awarding him a black belt at the end of it, which I think was a little bit uncalled for. But I think he was making money in getting into the movies, and he didn't need the police department and all the guff they were giving him about it. Because he appeared in about three or four pictures after that.

KL: Oh, a lot.

CT: In other ways.

KL: That's interesting that that woman, I guess she was Japanese American woman, who was the cook for James Cagney, had that connection to the judo world. I wonder if he asked her about dojos or where he could get training.

CT: Well, I'm sure Jack had met her in relation to his part. I suppose that Kenneth Kuniyuki was one of Jack's teachers at a point there, before things went down the tubes.

KL: I would guess so, if he asked him to take over the dojo.

CT: Yeah, well, Jack was the highest member of the club there, the only black belt.

KL: I've read the Blood on the Sun, that the fight scenes were incredible. That if there had been Academy Awards for fight scenes, it probably would have done well. And I've also read that it was a war film about Japan, but less racist than a lot of the other films. What did you think of the film?

CT: They did a real good job. I mean, he could teach anybody how to fall and how to take falls in judo given a little bit of time and the chance to teach it to 'em, and they did that with Cagney. And so once he did that, I guess Cagney was interested enough to continue doing it somewhat with a private teacher, meaning Jack. And that kept him where he had his contacts into the movie world so that he could make other pictures. But, of course, the other pictures had nothing to do with judo or Japanese or anything like that that he made. His biggest movie name was John Halloran, not Jack Sergil, John Halloran. Why he changed his name just because he was, I don't know, maybe because he got away from the stigma he'd gotten with the police department on judo.

KL: What did you think of him as a teacher?

CT: Oh, he was a great teacher. He was a lot of fun to be around, and I have pictures of me throwing him, and he weighed two hundred and twenty pounds, and I weighed a little more than I do now, but never over a hundred and seventy. And Jack was always fun to be around, he was like a big kid.

KL: Is it expected in judo that you will learn to teach if you go high enough?

CT: Oh, no, if you're black belt, it means teacher. A dan grade as opposed to kyu grade is brown belt, dan grade is black belt, and once you're shodan, which is the first black belt, why, you're a teacher officially.