By Jonathan Vince
Special to the Garment & Citizen
September 15, 2006
Little Tokyo hasn’t always been so little. The neighborhood once stretched well beyond the 10 or 12 blocks currently filled with shops, restaurants and scattered residential complexes on the northeastern edge of Downtown.
The ethnic enclave counted 30,000 residents before the U.S. entered World War II in 1941—the point when many members of the Little Tokyo community were shipped out to internment camps on the order of the federal government.
Little Tokyo has been through plenty of ups and downs since then, and is currently home to approximately 1,000 residents, mostly elderly Japanese/Americans who wistfully recall those days gone by. And these days a local non-profit organization is asking them to recall one particular European/American woman who won renown and changed lives in Little Tokyo many decades ago.
The Little Tokyo Service Center (LTSC) recently received a grant from the California Council for the Humanities as part of its California Stories initiative to conduct a presentation on the life of Nellie Grace Oliver, an elementary school teacher who formed athletic clubs for Japanese/American children for nearly 26 years. The California Council for the Humanities will contribute $7,500 to the project as part of its California Stories Initiative; the Little Tokyo Service Center will match that amount.
The money will go toward efforts to piece information about Oliver into narrative that will serve as a reminder of the remarkable efforts she made on a volunteer basis. Oliver worked from 1917 to 1941 to provide some athletic and social outlet for Japanese/American youths who were barred from many such clubs in the first half of the 20th Century, when de facto segregation held sway in such matters. She raised private funds to pay for the activities, which put her in touch with the lives of hundreds of Japanese/American youngsters who learned athletic and social skills as members of various Oliver Clubs A few of those children, now mostly in their late 80s and early 90s, met with LTSC staff members to discuss the presentation outlining Oliver’s efforts. LTSC staffer Ron Fong and USC doctoral student Hilary Jenks are overseeing the project, which is expected to include video interviews with former Oliver Club members, old pictures, and other artifacts. The presentation will eventually go on display at the Discovery Center in the Far East Building on 1st Street, according to Fong.
The former Oliver members reminisced during a recent luncheon at the recently re-opened Chop Suey Café, also in the Far East Building, a location that helped stir fond memories.
“We used to meet at this cafe after baseball games,” said Jack Kunitomi, who was a member of an Oliver Club known as the Midgets. “We’d take a bag with a change of clothes, call the girls, and go watch double features. The best show in town.”
The setting also stirred up some old pride. “All the Oliver guys were natural athletes,” said Ets Yoshiyama, who played for an Oliver club called the Broncos.
Some were better than others and continued in athletics beyond Little Tokyo. Joseph Suski, a former Oliver Junior, went on to play baseball for UCLA, batting lead-off and covering ground in center fielder. Jim Yamaguchi, a member of the Oliver Mustangs, played baseball at Northwestern University after World War II.
Oliver and her clubs helped the young Japanese/Americans develop their athletic skills, to be sure. But she also gets credit for taking some
tough street kids and turning them into gentleman.
“These guys were hell raisers—they were the gang on 1st Street,” said Colleen Miyano, Kunitomi’s daughter. “Miss Oliver taught them table manners, how to dress, how to act, and what to say.”
The club members also learned to dance—and learned to like it. “They had to force us to dance at first,” said Kunitomi. “Afterwards, they couldn’t stop us.”
Harry Yamamoto, a former club member and the driving force behind an Oliver Club archive established in the 1990s, agreed.
“She’d tell us: ‘Don’t chew gum, and don’t smoke,’” Yamamoto said. “She was like an angel to all of us.”
Oliver offered some other incentives for her ruffian pupils, too, serving up hot chocolate with marshmallows.
“Oh, was that good, recalled Kunitomi. “We never had things like that.”
Most of the old Oliver Club members now live far from their old stomping grounds. But they remain connected to the neighborhood and those days gone by thanks to the photographs, trophies and memories they’ve saved.
Those pieces—and the memories to be captured on video—will soon give the general public an opportunity to share in the story of Oliver. And the project comes as the LTSC works to raise funds for a multi-million dollar, multi-sport gymnasium in Little Tokyo that Oliver would no doubt appreciate.
LTSC representatives have said they see the gym as a 1st Street Reunion: Oliver Club members recently got together to share a lunch and some memories,revisiting their old stomping grounds at the Chop Suey Café in Little Tokyo. Pictured here are Jack Kunitomi, Edward Wada, Ets Yoshiyama, Joe Suski and Harry Yamamoto. Athletic Impressario of Yesteryear Remembered as LTSC Pursues New Gym
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