Densho Digital Archive - George Nakata Interview (denshovh-ngeorge

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GN: So we operated that hotel for quite a few years, and I went to Couch School for the completion of the eighth grade. Mary went on to Lincoln High School. And together with a lot of friends in that area, again Yoji Matsushima was there and Ko Tambara was there and George Sumino, Elsie Morita now Elsie Onishi, the Kita girls, Alice and Jean Kita, we were all classmates, Kenny Tambara, Hank Sasaki. We all ended up there at Lincoln High School. And so there were quite a few of us Japanese Americans that went to Lincoln, and Yoji and I walked there every day from Northwest Portland all the way up there to Seventh and Market Street, and we kind of smiled and looked at Lincoln Hall of Portland State University. Our high school is now part of a university, and we kiddingly tell people, "Yeah, we went to a university for high school." But be that as it may, we go into that building, Yoji and I, and we can look back to our old high school days there at Lincoln High School. We played a lot, we gained a lot of friends, played sports. I played baseball. Ko and George Sumino, they played football. Roy Sumino was all-city. So we really had tough time for the parents, readjustment, the resettlement, of course losing everything they had, trying to make yourself financially solvent again, but finding time to, their going to a church in Milwaukie, Koyasan Church, and going to the Buddhist temple, going to the Nichiren Temple, going to the Shinto.

In my case, an unusual thing happened. We were either at Couch School or perhaps just entering Lincoln High School and a bunch of us playing in the North Park Blocks. A couple of older people came by, happened to be Kenji Onishi and Tsuguo Ikeda, "Well, what are you people doing?" Oh, we're just playing on the swing, playing mumbly peg which is a game you play with a pocket knife, shooting marbles, and they knew what we're doing. "You play for keeps or you play for funs?" "Oh, we're just playing for funs, but we don't like George's steel ball or marble." Oh, we'd be talking, and they'd say, "Well, we have an idea. There's a church up there close to 16th and Everett. It's called Epworth. We're trying to start a youth group, a Methodist fellowship. Why don't you come on up there maybe next Sunday evening, and we'll chat about it?" Well, we didn't have much to do. We went up there, and that was really the beginning to my knowledge of the MYF probably as it stands today. So Kenji and Tsuguo Ikeda were the impetus, the real force behind that movement, and we started to go to church, Francis Hayashi and his family Eugene and Donald Hayashi. We met a lot of people there, and other people started to come, and so our MYF grew and it became larger, and we went to our first conference in Seattle or Spokane or to Ontario. And I remember going and having if you will a hard discussion with Mrs. Hayashi that we ought to have a dance in the church basement which was something you just don't do, but finally she gave in, chaperoned and all. We had our jell-o dessert and ice cream. We played a little Perry Como, Nat King Cole, and we had a great time. I don't know whether they've ever had a dance in the Epworth church after that, but we were kind of pioneers so that I do know for a fact that they had one dance, the basement of the Epworth.

What was really perhaps more significant is the first Nikkei graduation ceremony was held in that very same basement, and it was very small just a simple little dinner, not a whole lot of scholarships, not a lot of awards, just MYF members graduating from high school. Yes, we had a couple that might have gone out of Jefferson or Washington High School but just a handful of us. And to some of us that were there on that first get together of the today the Nikkei Community Graduation Banquet which went on to bigger and greater things with many, many scholarships, Red Lion, Double Tree, Shilo, Multnomah Athletic Club, we kind of can look back and say, "Well, everything has a beginning. Sure good that Kenji and Tsuguo invited us up there, and one time somebody had the idea that well maybe we ought to have a little dinner for the graduates." It's come a long ways, but it's the history. And someday in 2025, somebody's probably going to wonder, how in the world did this graduation ceremony ever came to be. So that was an interesting part. We, of course, had friends that were Buddhist, friends that were Nichiren, friends that went to the Shinto.