<Begin Segment 4>

RP: You had an interesting play area right down the way there, the Los Angeles River.

FH: Oh, we used to walk down there, the river, all the time. Yeah, we did a lot. My girlfriend that, Takechi, her name is Ruth, and we'd go over to her house and we'd say, "Let's go down to --" well, there used to be the Hyperion Bridge, you know? And from there we'd go down and walk the river and walk all the way up the river to Las Feliz and walk home to my house. Kids don't do that now.

RP: What was it like down there, on the river?

FH: There was not a lot of -- I mean, it's quite wide, but there was a narrower river that went there, going down there, and it had growth in there, greenery. And I remember people used to take their animals down there, like goats and horses and... those two I remember. There may have been others, but I don't know, and we'd say, "Oh, we got to stay away from them. We don't know how wild they are." We used to do that. Walked all the time, all the time.

RP: This is the time before --

FH: War.

RP: -- the channels are put in, too. The concrete.

FH: Yeah, I think it was built up, but then they put the fluorine in. I think it was... I could almost see it right now, but I knew when they had that big flood in La Crescenta, oh, the water went down fast. I mean, it was, a trickle of water with a whole wide ocean of water going down. We had gone to --

RP: You watched it?

FH: Yeah, we watched it, and there were all sorts of things going down there. Everything got washed out.

KP: That was 1948?

FH: Yeah, it could be, it could've been about then. That big fire in La Crescenta. It was interesting.

RP: You see any other wildlife or frogs or birds, things down there?

FH: I'm sure there were, but we weren't interested in that. We were just worried that the animal didn't come and attack us. That's about it.

RP: You spend time in Griffith Park, too?

FH: A lot of our spare time, summertime we'd go down there. Pack a little lunch and go down there and... you know how little girls do. I don't think that parents now allow that, but in those days we went down and took our blanket or whatever it was and laid it down and ate our lunch and laughed and giggled and did girly, fun things. And we had a lot of fun.

RP: So this Takechi girl was one of your real close friends. Did you have other girlfriends there?

FH: Yeah, we had other girls that joined us, but I can't remember off hand. And there were our girlfriends that we went to school with, we hung around in school with. And we'd meet, go down there. It was a girly thing that we did.

RP: Where did you go to grammar school?

FH: We, when I first went to that area we lived in a lily white area... what, that, at that era. And they said they don't let any other race go to that school. You have to be white. And the name of the school was Glen Feliz. I don't know if you know the... I think the name was Glen Feliz School. So Mom said, "Well, if we can't go there we'll go to Chevy Chase School," and we used to walk about a, maybe it wasn't a mile, but it was... you're little, it felt like mile or better, to Chevy Chase School, which was way up on Chevy Chase, and we'd walk home. And on a rainy day Dad would take us, but otherwise we walked up and walked back, and when my younger brother Willie started getting that age where he had to go to school, Mom said, "My kids aren't gonna walk that far." Their dear son was not gonna walk that far, so she made this big bouquet of flowers and took it to the principal, and talked to the principal with the broken English, and we were accepted to go to that school. That's how we got to go to Glen Feliz School. The lily white school. [Laughs]

RP: You integrated the school.

FH: Yeah, we sure did. But, gosh, that was thirty, must've been about '38. I think it was about '37 or '38. No, it couldn't have been '38. Oh, whatever it was, in the '30s. A lot of 'em, you know how people will talk, or family would talk at the table, discuss news, gossip, you name it, it goes on. So a lot of these kids had a grudge against the Japanese people, so they would say, "Go back to your own," real quietly they're like, "Go back to your own country." This is my country, right? I'm born here. But they don't know. They're, they're thinking what they heard. But they were like that, maybe for a while, but they became the best friends when we came, later on. When we went to junior high school we were good friends, best of friends, so you just have to know the person and be with them to draw your conclusion as what they, other than to pick up from at the dinner table.

RP: Were there other places that you were excluded from? Public places or...

FH: If there was, I don't know about it, and I didn't bide by it, other than when we went to camp we had to go to camp. I don't know. I can't think of any. You know, I can't... my thinking is forget the bad, go on with the next. You know what I mean? So I try to not remember some of the bad adventures, unless they came to a good conclusion, good ending.

RP: So things got better for you in junior high? You said that you learned, you got to know each other.

FH: Yeah, you're human, I'm human. We're going to the same school. We're in the same class. What makes you better than me? Of course, our nationality, I think it's nationality, we'll say, you don't go and make a commotion. You sit back and watch it go by, and if you think you have to make that move, make that move.

RP: Did you, did you challenge some of the things that were said about you?

FH: No, I... no, I was outnumbered. I was outnumbered. But they became good friends of mine. Of course, lot of them are gone. You know, when war broke out they signed up right away. Sixteen or seventeen, they signed up, so I'm sure there's many that didn't survive the war.

RP: Can you reflect a little bit on the relations with African Americans, too, or what the atmosphere was like at that time towards African Americans?

FH: There weren't too many in that area. Very little. I'm sure there were, but... no, I don't think there were that many African Americans in there.

RP: How about other minority groups?

FH: There was a bunch of the Mexican, Hispanic race. Because Chevy Chase was known for the Hispanic area. That's why we went there, because of the... there were a good many up there in that area. That's why we went to that school. And the lily white school was way over here. But I understand that Glen Feliz School is still existing. My high school is still there. It was condemned, but I understand they... it was an old English brick building, and it was condemned, but the neighborhood said they wanted it. So we, they did what they had to do and it's still in session. As a matter of fact, they were one of the highest class that got bunched, that went to different areas and did this debate or whatever. It's right there, Hollywood Hill. John Marshall High. It was a good era. Not complicated like it is now. Life is too complicated.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.