Densho Digital Archive - George Hara Interview (denshovh-hgeorge

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GH: The other thing was as we grew older, the Scout program became part of our lives. One was located in Shattuck, Troop 98, and there were about five of us that were members. The scoutmasters and the squad leaders were mainly hakujin and -- but we learned the scout oath, and I got the manual here just to make sure I'm repeating right. "On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to guard at my country, obey the scout law, to help other people of all kind, keep myself physically strong and mentally awake, morally straight." And then they had the scout's law: "Be loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient." And then I looked up obedient; it says "obey your parents, scout master, patrol leader and all other duly constituted authorities." And this was the kind of discipline and respect that we were brought up with. This is instilled to us at school and scout activities and Japanese school and then home, and I think this affected the way things moved later on. Anyway, this was an activity which is more American oriented with Yosh Teshima, another about my age who was a scouter. One year, we signed up to go, to go to Camp Merriweather which is an all-boy scout camp for the area. We spent one week there, beautiful. And we lived in a tent, took a Trapper Nelson backpack and canteen, bedding, and this was a new experience. All other scouts were hakujin kids, and our squad leader was an all-city black football player, Dick Stanton, and he led us on a twenty-mile hike once, and it opened up a new horizon in a way. One of my tent mates I went to Washington High School with later, and then another went to Franklin. He became a pharmaceutical rep, and he called on me when I was a doctor and in practice later on. So these friendships developed over time. And there was a lot of activities. The one activity that I enjoyed was the Rose Festival, and we used to find good seating, bring our own orange boxes in front of Meier and Frank. And at that time, they used to come along Fifth Avenue. We'd get good seats. And before the parade started, the office buildings, the workers, they would toss coins, nickels, dimes, we would scramble, so we'd make, you know, few bucks, and at times we would try to sell our orange boxes. And it was fun.

And the other was Japanese, they had a Japanese training ship called the Taisei Maru. It was a 4-masted sailing vessel, and that the future officers trained sailing across the Pacific, and Portland was one of their chief ports of call, and the Japanese community both the south and the port -- North Japanese Issei would take the officers and the cadets sightseeing and do all they could for them. And in return, the ship would dock a few blocks away in South Portland, and they opened up their ship to us Japanese kids, so we'd spend a lot of time there, ate meals with them, even took furo in their ships bath, played ping-pong with them. And this was entirely different from the other one when the American fleet came in, the Navy fleet during Rose Festival. We found out that if we went there at the beginning of twilight, they would show first rate movies on the top deck, and we can sit out on the seawall and enjoy it. But we didn't have any free access, their visiting hours were limited. And we felt much more at home in the Taisei Maru which was like a second home when they were in port. Anyway, those were the activities. And, but the more I think about it, our lives, our culture was strictly different from those growing up in Japan. We were influenced by America, American school and the teaching. But in spite of all the differences that might be superficial, the main thing was the obedience to the parents, respect to the people in authority, and the teachers and study hard.