<Begin Segment 5>

HH: So you grew up in Bergenfield and went to high school in Bergenfield?

KI: Right. We were the first Japanese kids to go through the school, I was the first one in the school, and the school was, it was a mixed school. We had, it was all blue collar, primarily blue collar people, but they mixed Italians and Germans and Irish and Polish, Jewish, and Spanish, and Black, and one Asian. That was me, I was the first one into the school. So it was kind of like a constant battle through school. The kids that were into school would always test you. Didn't matter who it was, everybody tested me. And even the teachers, they resented the fact that they had Japanese in the class. Of course, that was through grammar school, and then by the time I reached junior high school, the Korean War was raging, and so it just started all over again with, didn't matter whether you were a Korean, Japanese, Chinese or whatever. A "gook" is a "gook," and that's what I was. And so I got it from people on the way to school, they used to yell at me and tell me not to walk on their sidewalk, walk on the other side of the street. Walk on the other side of the street and people would say the same thing back. People would yell all kinds of foul terms at me, they'd spit at me. Kids would throw rocks at me as I was going to school, because they didn't want me to come near their property. And, of course, I'd do the same thing back to them, I'd throw rocks back at them. And if I got close enough to them, I guess you would say that I was known as the neighborhood bad boy, because I got into a fight, I think just about every day. Every day I went to school, I was in a fight. And I was considered a troublemaker in school, and I was considered a troublemaker in the neighborhood, but, I mean, it was a matter of survival.

HH: Were you alone? Did you have any friends at all?

KI: Sure. I had one friend, German friend. In fact, he was the first friend that I had when I moved into the new neighborhood, and took us a little while before I learned to speak, I guess, enough English that I understood what he was saying. But he and I today are still the best of friends. And we used to fight each other, and he used to fight with me. We got into a fight, if things weren't even, he'd jump in and he'd always side with me. So he was a good friend. But he and I used to get into it almost every day, I'd be into a fight with somebody. And it was either in school or outside of school, didn't seem to matter where it was. It was pretty constant. And I can remember my mother being upset and crying when I get home, because I'd come home while beaten up, clothes torn, and constantly had a black eye, cut.

HH: During this time, your father was still working in New York City?

KI: Working in New York City.

HH: He would commute across the river?

KI: Yes, he would. Every day he'd go out early in the morning, you'd leave at six forty-five in the morning, I can remember. He wouldn't get home until past seven o'clock at night, and we didn't have a car, so he had to do everything by bus, I think. He'd go back to work on Saturdays, and he used to work half a day on Saturdays. So we didn't see too much of him.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 1994 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.