Densho Digital Archive - John Tomita Interview (denshovh-tjohn

<Begin Segment 7>

KP: So from the Isleton grammar school you said you went next to the high school.

JT: Yeah, well, I thought I was gonna go to Rio Vista high school until a week before school started. Then we, my dad asked me if I wanted to go to school in Berkeley. So, being a wild kid, I said, "Hell yeah. I'll go." And I did go to Berkeley. I went to Willard junior high school. The most loneliest time I ever had in my life was leaving Isleton and going to school in Berkeley.

RP: Where did you stay? Where did you, where did you go?

JT: Well, see, my father had a friend in Berkeley and I guess through correspondence I guess and they, he had one spare room and I was able to move into that room. But, turned out that when we went out there, that family had already rented that room to some other people so they didn't have a room for me. So, they took me to this person's friend's about a mile away, up in the hill. He had a room in the back cottage. Though they rented the back cottage so fourteen year old kid leaving home from Isleton to Berkeley and then going to a strange neighborhood. I didn't even know where the school was or what. And that was my... but I don't see how my dad ever let a fourteen year old kid leave like that. He took me out to Berkeley and we went out to dinner, and he left. So I was stuck out there. But, I look back at it now, I mean, I grew up, I mean I had to grow up. And I used to cry myself to sleep every night. The sad part of it is that train that I came from, there was a train that runs from Sacramento to, to the Bay Area, they called it the Sacramento Northern, and it doesn't come to Isleton but it comes to quite a way from Rio Vista. Though my dad knew how to get there and put me on that train and then that train... and every time when they come over the hill in the Berkeley hills, I hear the train whistle. And, and it's always nine o'clock when that train is comin' over the mountain and I hear the train whistle and nine o'clock at night and boy I couldn't hold my tears. I just had to jump in the bed and tears just keep on falling. And I used to, so I'd study until nine o'clock and then jump in bed. Yeah, and those were my loneliest times. But it made me stronger.

KP: Why do you think your father did that? Looking back, why do you think your father...

JT: Well, just because he left home at sixteen, I figure. Yeah, at fourteen I'm old enough to take care of myself. Yeah. But boy, when I had my kid, when he was fourteen, I say, gosh how can, I can't let him go anywhere. But my dad took me and left me there. But it made me grow up. I learned to wash my own clothes. I even learned to iron the white shirts, iron my slacks. All I do is spread it out and put under the mattress. Yeah, I learned to take care of myself.

KP: And how was school different in Berkeley?

JT: Oh, gosh, you know, good thing I was tough kid. I mean I, somehow I knew I was gonna take care of myself. I didn't know where school was. They, told me, "It's that way." And I went there. And I registered and then I, gosh... and I didn't have any friends or anybody. So, I had to make my own friends. But, you know, the friends that I had was Caucasians. Here I used to fight with them. [Laughs] In Berkeley I got the, these kids, they were the only ones, friendly ones. They wouldn't let many, there was only about five Japanese. And I thought they were a bunch of snobs. Yeah, and so I used to hang around with white kids. Yeah, oh, I was playing baseball. I was on the American Legion yeah, Lumpy Lion... it was Lumpy Lion or something. You know, American Legion team. And then basketball, school. I liked sports. I was always involved in sports mainly.

KP: Is that primarily how you met your friends, in sports?

JT: Yeah. Uh-huh. That's how I met my friends. Yeah, yeah. I remember when baseball games and the practices, yeah, I'm riding on the, I'm either pumping or I'm riding on the back seat going to the park going to the ball game. But I was always running around with white kids.

KP: What, how were the scholastics there? Did you find yourself becoming a more serious student?

JT: Yeah. You know I didn't have any, I didn't have any friends at home. So that's the only thing that kept me going was studying. I didn't realize that I had to go to junior high school when I was in the ninth grade and, and the ninth grade I had a, yeah a Mrs. Harris. She was my math teacher. And she always encouraged me to study math and, and I thought I liked that teacher, Mrs. Harris. I still remember the old lady. She encouraged me to take up engineering. So I didn't know anything about engineering. So I was taking college prep courses. But many years later that I found I didn't know that they had this XYZ group in high school. They, by IQ they arrange the classes for you. If you're X-section you, you're with all the brains. And if you're Y or Z group, you, you take much simpler course and they're rated. I always, I didn't realize why I was in this X group and why they take the same chem tests, I get eighty and that's a C in X-section. But if you're in, in the Y, Z, that's a B. And, gosh, so I thought I was getting cheated all the time. But it turned out that I was in with all the, the... my classmates, I tell you, they go to Europe or they go back east, and gosh, I used to envy those kids. When I went into chem, gosh, they were hardly studying. They were goofing off and, gosh, they were smart all right. But, oh gee, I know it said, that guy, Hoffman, yeah, Hoffman, oh gosh, he got involved with some gal and he shot himself. And...

KP: This was in high school?

JT: Yeah. Right before we went into Cal. So senior year in high school. Yeah, this... I guess they, the senior, I guess they start goofing around with gals, I guess. Hoffman, this Guy Bradshaw, Bradshaw, Guy Bradshaw, yeah, in the chem lab he makes his own poison and drank, drinks it. Yeah. And Hildebrand. I didn't know, he was a, really a sissy kid. He hardly played sports or anything. Sissy kid. And then found out that the, his father is a professor at Cal. He's teaching chemistry. I'm taking, I'm taking chemistry class and, and wouldn't you know, he tells me, he trying to help me with the chem stuff. And I says, "How come you know so much?" He says, "Well my dad is teaching at..." [Laughs]