<Begin Segment 5>

RP: Do you have any other early memories of your growing up years in, in Los Angeles?

HN: Well, my mother made us go to Japanese school during, on the weekends, on Saturdays. So every Saturday was spent going to Japanese school to learn Japanese. And then during the week we went to kendo classes at the Japanese school in east L.A., where the teachers were Mr. Shimo and I forget the other teacher's name. But... and they lived only a block away from us so he used to come by, pick me up, take me to the kendo classes, me and my brother. So we took kendo when we were young.

RP: What did --

HN: That's bamboo sword fighting.

RP: What... did you like that? What...

HN: Oh yes, very rewarding.

RP: Competitive but also...

HN: And competitive.

RP: ...character building.

HN: Yeah, character building, right.

RP: Uh-huh. But even with all, with, even with the coverings and stuff...

HN: It still hurts when it hits you on the arms. You, they're supposed to hit you on the body under your arms. But if you didn't have your arms up it ended up hitting you on the upper arm and it hurt. Then they hit you in the side of the head. You got a metal mask in the front but they always, if you're smaller, ends up hitting you in the back of the head. So you have just a cloth, padded cloth covering on the side of your head and that kinda hurt, too.

RP: And you, you went, went there every day after school?

HN: No, it was Thursday or Friday night. I forget. And then we were in the Boy Scouts, so we had to go to Boy Scouts once a week, once a month. So that was growing up in east L.A.

RP: Did you go out on hikes or outings with the Boy Scouts?

HN: Well, the Japanese school, during the summer, took us to Brighton Beach in San Pedro, every summer. We got to go, every weekend we got to go to the beach.

RP: Every weekend?

HN: Yeah, the Japanese school used to take us during the summer.

RP: What do you remember about that?

HN: It was a fun time. Get to go with all the kids and get to go in the water at the beach. Brighton Beach was on San Pedro Island, you know. On the Terminal Island.

RP: On Terminal Island.

HN: Yeah. And that's where actually all the Japanese went, congregated, at that beach. And a lot of the... I don't know if you know what kenjinkai is. Kenjinkais are different groups, Japanese groups that had clubs in town. And we were inthe Okayama kenjinkai, picnics and picnics and beach parties and things like that. I remember that when I was a kid, yeah.

RP: Where were those held?

HN: In Legion Park, Griffith Park, and then Brighton Beach.

RP: Were there a fair number of people from Okayama?

HN: Yes, quite a few. Quite a few from Okayama.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.