Densho Digital Archive - Ted Hachiya Interview (denshovh-hted

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MP: Was that at that time, you all going on to college, was that unusual?

TH: You know, a lot of families couldn't afford to send their siblings, I mean children to college. My dad always wanted me to go to college. But I got out of school too early, and I didn't enjoy college as much as I might have had I realized what I wanted to be. I didn't know what I wanted to be. He just sent me to college. So I went to Reed for a year and a half, quit, and went to work down for CRPA Tuna Factory. I learned how to butcher tuna fish.

MP: And why did you leave Reed?

TH: Well, long story. You know, they were on the honor system. The student body threatened to have us thrown out of school because we were gambling. There was a fellow named Sam Lee. Everybody called him Ham Bone for short. And the Student Union Building was built newly in, I think, 1938, and a lot of students played cards in there, either bridge or hearts or, they didn't gamble too much, but we got to running a gambling table and then blackjack table and hearts table, and we used to take, we called it tedai. It was a take, you know. You used to take five percent of the pot all the time for supplying the cards and what not, and we managed to get two hours lunch, both of us, he ran a table and I ran the other table, and we were making better than spending money. But it got so interesting and so lucrative that, and we kept the kids broke all the time, you know. And these, people that went to Reed College was supposed to be smart kids, but they're dumb when it comes to gambling. I think a lot of people referred to them as rednecks, but I didn't think they were too bright. A gambler is sharper.

MP: So what happened?

TH: Well, then we got called before the student union one day, and they threatened to have us, you know, kicked out of school if we continued on. So I says, "Well, you don't have to kick me out, I quit," and I walked out of school. I took a lunch every day for six months. Dad thought that I was still going to school, but I was working all the time. When he finally found out I wasn't going to school, he asked me what I was doing, and I told him I was working. And I said, "If you want the money, it's all here." I gave him all the money. He didn't say a thing, but he said, "I want you to go back to school, any school." So I went through, I think I worked for half the year for CRPA Cannery, and then I got admitted on a Licksey football scholarship to Linnfield. Well, I got to tell you about that football in high school, you know. We didn't have time to go out to practice football with the varsity squad or any of the group. And there was a coach there, Waldorf. I think his name was Waldorf. I don't remember exactly his name, but he came to see me. He asked me one time, "How come you don't turn out for football?" because, you know, I was knocking all the linemen around, you know. I weighed 180 pounds, I guess, in school. One hundred eighty pounds was a big man in high school. Now, they got behemoths, they're 250s, almost 300. But anyway, he came to see Dad. I said, "It won't do any good," because Dad had an answer for him. He says, "How come you don't let your son go to play athletics?" He says, "School is a place to study, not to play." And Waldorf never said another word. He turned right around, walked out, and thanked my dad for allowing him to speak to him, and he never bothered me again.

MP: That was in high school?

TH: High school, yeah. Oh, I got to mention the Reed College too. I played for the football team the first year. We were undefeated team, and some of the national newspaper picked it up, and it was Reed College versus Chicago in the Brain Storm Bowl. Bowls were beginning to become popular. I think I kept an article on that darn thing. I forgot about that, but I was playing on a football team. We played a lot of CCA boys that were, you know, and some small college. We beat them all. I think we won ten or twelve games, you know, during the season, and it was, we had quite a write-up in our newspapers.

MP: So where was the Brain Storm Bowl?

TH: Well, they just talked about it. It didn't actually come up, but they talked about us. Reed College has a football team, and it's undefeated. See --

MP: Did you actually play University of Chicago?

TH: No. We didn't play Chicago, University of Chicago, but they were known as a kind of a brainy college in, back in those days. Reed College was a pretty highly rated college, but I don't know. I don't know why they call them rednecks, but that's what they used to call everybody that went there.

MP: Who were the rednecks?

TH: Why they call it, it's just a nickname. That's what they named them, you know. They were the, considered little radicals really.

MP: At Reed?

TH: Yes. But they were considered a highly rated college.

MP: Still are, yeah. What kind of a student were you?

TH: Well in science and biology, I got good grades in those. I majored in science but didn't do good on the rest of it. I didn't go to classes.

MP: Why? Were you busy --

TH: Well, because busy organizing the gambling. I thought that was really something, you know, because imagine the student in those days, 1938. My dad worked for something like $185 a month, and I was making all of that in maybe a couple weeks, and I had more money than he did. Oh, speaking about money, you know, I don't carry coins in my pocket. My mother used to hear the coins jingle in my pocket, and she'd want to know where I got the money all the time, so I started to carry paper money. [Laughs] It's so funny. She would hear this coin. I'd be walking up the stairs or someplace, and she'd hear the coins jingling in my pocket and says, "Where did you get that money?" She thought I was stealing it from her.

MP: So she thought you were up to no good if she heard the jangling coins? [Laughs]

TH: Yeah. I was very enterprising. When I was, when I was going to Linnfield College, it didn't work out too well there. They wouldn't furnish the glasses, I had been wearing glasses to play football. I couldn't see beyond my nose. I even made a touchdown one time. I caught the ball. I don't know how it got in my hands, but I ran the wrong way, made a touchdown for the other team. Well, that was at Reed, that's right. But anyway, the following year, they offered me a tryout at Oregon, so I went to Oregon, and they gave me a job down there, but I had to work, and I didn't like that because it was the athletic scholarship that I was after. They offered it to people that were outstanding. But I wasn't particularly outstanding, I was just rough. I was a tough guy. You couldn't get by me too easy.