Densho Digital Archive - Susumu Iwasaki Interview (denshovh-isusumu

<Begin Segment 11>

RP: Did your mother or father have a creative side, a hobby or an art that they practiced?

SI: My dad was a cactus lover. And he used to have, it was a small area maybe about, oh, I would say not more than this. And then there was an entryway and then both sides he used to grow cactus. Why cactus? That's what we said. There was no room for planting anything. So, that was the only hobby that he used to have, growing cactus.

RP: Cactus on Terminal Island.

SI: Yeah.

RP: And your mom?

SI: No.

RP: No music or art or...

SI: No, no. My sister used to take violin lesson. But aside from that...

RP: How about you?

SI: Well, the only thing I did was kendo. And according to my sensei, he says, well, I'm pretty good, but he says... so I almost made a rank of first degree black. But he tells me I'm too small. I was only like, maybe like 5 feet. I was small then. And anyway, that sensei was telling me that, when I saw him in Japan. But, like I said, they... our group was one of the strongest.

RP: You, you toured all over the, all over the Los Angeles...

SI: Oh, yeah. Well, mostly, not so much around L.A. area though. There were, there were, we used to have tournaments, Long Beach, Wilmington, Gardena, Norwalk. That's all I can remember. We, we used to go all the way up to, like, Guadalupe, San Jose, Lodi, Stockton, and then Sacramento. And the teacher used to take us. There were all these, well, he selected group of people, we used to get in his car.

RP: How many usually? What size group would you have?

SI: The...

RP: What size group of kids would go?

SI: You mean the age group?

RP: How many?

SI: Oh, I would say at least a half a dozen.

RP: Tell us what, what was competition like? Did you have a specific time period where you...

SI: Well, yeah. Whenever they have a competition like that there's usually five men team. And then you, you fight against all these different group. Then whoever rack up the most point is the winner. And they give you one of them flags.

RP: There's a referee, too, that...

SI: What's that?

RP: A referee or a judge that gives...

SI: Oh yeah, yeah. Well, you can tell like if there's five of us, five of them, if it went four of them, you rack up that much points, four points, right? So you get another group and then we fight. So...

RP: And you get points for hitting an opponent in a certain place?

SI: Oh yeah. Head, side, and then arm. Not so much here. [Points to chest] There is, you could, but very few people used to go for that. Mostly for head and you know...

RP: And your, your swords or fencing, what was that made out of? Was it bamboo?

SI: Bamboo. Yeah.

RP: So did... when you got hit pretty hard...

SI: Yeah, well, you're still wearing mask, too, but you know like if they miss, they're comin' down with all their might, right? And mostly sometime they get, they'll come like this and you'll hit your side here. And mostly arm.

RP: Now, when you got to Manzanar, did you continue practicing kendo?

SI: No.

RP: There was a kendo place there.

SI: Well, for one thing, I don't know whatever happened to our, our equipment. We just lost it when we evacuated from Terminal Island. And those things are not cheap. So we had three set of 'em. All three of us used to... so, and the other stuff I don't know where it went to. It just, lotta stuff, some of the stuff that we, I think Dad somehow or another stored some of the stuff. We got it back after the war. I remember seeing those things in boxes in the garage. So anyway, I never inquired about that after that.