<Begin Segment 12>

LG: So what was high school like for you? We talked about it a little bit, but did you play in sports or what subjects you...

AN: I learned to play tennis because my father was a tennis player. I don't know how the heck he picked it up, but I got on, I was just barely good enough to make the bottom ladder of the team, so I got onto the tennis team in high school. That was my only sport of a competitive nature I got into. And the rest of the time, as I alluded to, I got into writing and reporting and photography. So between those three things, I was rather occupied. And one of the ironies of it is that in high school reunions, I was part of a organizing committee because I knew everybody. Not that they were all buddies or anything. Because of my functioning as a newspaper reporter and yearbook writer, I got to encounter almost everybody in the class, whether they were close friends or not didn't matter. And so that was an unexpected outcome of the things that I pursued, focused on in high school.

LG: I'm curious those instances that you mentioned as a child of people attacking you and your brothers, did those continue on to high school? Did you ever feel...

AN: Well, one can only surmise that one of the things after the '50s, because of the Korean War, a lot of mixed marriages took place when it was American military personnel doing R&R in Japan while the war was going on in Korea. And this resulted in a surprising number of mixed marriages, people coming back to California and the West Coast. And that had, in retrospect, an impact on ameliorating or, anyway, making it more acceptable to have Asians and Japanese Americans, et cetera, intermeshing culturally with the larger white population on the West Coast. And so that effect had a, was positive in that it diminished the hostility with Japanese Americans and the rest of the population on the West Coast and the United States.

LG: Any other memories from grade school or high school that you want to share [inaudible].

AN: Something unusual or different? Nothing comes to mind just like that, I'll have to think about it.

LG: It could be something mundane, too, if it meant something to you.

AN: No, I'll have to come back to that.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2023 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.