<Begin Segment 5>

JK: What do you remember about grade school days?

AO: One incident that I could remember is being a little bit late in going to school, and when I got to school, all the kids were already inside the school building, and I couldn't open the school door because the doors were so heavy. And so I went home crying and then my mom brought me back to school, opened the door for me, and explained to the teacher why I was late that day. I still remember that incident because I just wasn't strong enough to open that school door. [Laughs]

JK: And what do you remember about your classroom or your classmates? Were they mostly hakujin?

AO: Yeah, almost all hakujin. I can only remember one Asian girl that was in the same class as I was, and her name was Grace Wong. She was a Chinese girl whose family lived in the Montavilla area. But I had no other Japanese or Chinese classmates in my class.

JK: How did the kids, the other kids in the classroom treat you?

AO: Oh, I never felt any separate treatment or prejudice or anything. I think I felt pretty much like I belonged there, and nobody made fun of me or did anything to make me feel like I was not fully acceptable by the school and the kids.

JK: Were they interested in your culture and heritage? Did they want to learn more about what Japanese was?

AO: No, not that much interest.

JK: So you had no opportunity to share. Would they come home to your house and do things with you?

AO: Oh, yeah. I'd go to their place and they'd come over to my place, and we'd play and so forth. But there wasn't much discussion or talking about being Japanese or anything different.

JK: Okay, how about when you moved to Ankeny area and went to Washington High School? Do you have any interesting memories of your high school days?

AO: Well, I remember playing basketball on the junior team, which was the secondary team, not the main team. And I remember, after the war broke out, I remember our team traveling to different schools, and I remember it was either Jefferson or Roosevelt, and the only prejudiced thing that was said was when I was going to shoot a foul shot, somebody in the audience said, "Remember Pearl Harbor." I still remember that voice saying that. But other than that, there wasn't any prejudice against me. I was also very interested in table tennis as I mentioned, and I became pretty proficient in that. I joined the Portland table tennis club which had a facility right across the street from the downtown public library. So I used to go there quite often to play table tennis. I entered many of the tournaments that we had there for boys that were sixteen and under. After the war broke out in December of '41, all of the Japanese ancestry people were supposed to be in their homes by eight o'clock, and not be outside away from home after eight p.m. every night. Well, I wanted to enter the tournaments that they had, table tennis tournaments downtown in the club, and so I had to, quote, "break the rules" and stay there past eight o'clock. But because I did that, I was able to win the Oregon State sixteen and under boys table tennis tournament. The Northwest tournament was held in February of that year, of 1942, and so I became the northwest boys sixteen and under champion. And then I played at the Pacific Coast championship, which was also held in Portland that year, in '42, and I won that. So I became the Pacific Coast sixteen and under boys table tennis champion, and I had some kind of national seeding of twenty or twenty-one or something like that.

JK: Were you worried about breaking the...

AO: Oh, yeah, 'cause I knew I wasn't supposed to be out after eight p.m., but I wanted to win the tournament, so I stayed out and I played in the tournament.

JK: Were your parents worried or did they know that you were doing this?

AO: No. Well, my dad was already interned by that time.

JK: And so your mom?

AO: Yeah. Nobody ever said anything.

JK: How about your tennis team, your table tennis team? Were they concerned or did they help you?

AO: No, they didn't say anything. There were several Chinese players at the tennis club, and they were more sympathetic to me than anything else.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2013 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.