Densho Digital Archive - Roy Murakami Interview (denshovh-mroy

<Begin Segment 9>

RP: Well, what do you remember about your early years growing up in North Hollywood?

RM: Oh, I enjoyed it. Only thing is probably not 'til the war started was it really... got down to it. But, we got... we were the only two Japanese going to the school, my brother and myself were the only one. We used to go to the one they call Rio Vista which is the classic, classic school because there was all guys from Tule Lake and those were coming there, too. And got to know those kids there, but that's the only thing I remember.

RP: So there was only two...

RM: Japanese.

RP: Japanese American students.

RM: Uh-huh.

RP: How were you treated by your other classmates?

RM: It was fine. Then they... we got into Boy Scouts. That's the one of the ones that maybe that [inaudible] because Boy Scouts were always, Cub Scouts then. And Cub then, then master said that we have to have a show for the school so we were in a group and Washington and Lincoln, you know? And we had the beards with cotton and stuff like that and do it. And then at the end they started singing anti-war songs. [Laughs]

RP: Like, like what?

RM: "You're a Sap, Mister Jap." [Laughs] And "Praise the Lord, Pass the Ammunition." [Laughs] Well, it didn't hurt us because we were too young to know anything anyway.

RP: Was this after the war broke out?

RM: No. Yeah, after the war, in...

RP: In school.

RM: In school. It was February, I think, because that's when we, when the holidays at that time were Washington and Lincoln's birthdays.

RP: Boy, that's a profound remembrance.

RM: [Laughs] I remember that. My father's nursery was, tenant at one time, had to sell it so they sold it and this guy that bought it had put out a flag, a poster, a big poster that says, "Now owned by white Americans." [Laughs]

RP: This was at, at your father's nursery?

RM: My nursery, yeah. And then they took it, made 'em take it down, though. The, the council made him take it down, so it was only up for a day. But that's... he didn't know any better than that.