by Amy Eto, as told to Matt Morizono
“Word got around that I was teaching the young boys how to dance to Duke Ellington’s music, and eventually, girls started to come around the office.”
As a young girl before camp, I would hang around my father’s grocery store at the corner of 7th and Center in West Oakland. The Black customers, who were mostly from the South, taught me how to dance when they frequented my father’s store. When I wasn’t sweeping the sidewalk in front of the grocery store, they taught me the Charleston and other popular dances of the day.
At Topaz, we had a record player and a little case of Duke Ellington’s records that we were allowed to bring from home. There was not much to do at camp, so my younger brother, Chet, and a group of his friends would hang around the camp office where I was volunteering as the secretary for the manager of Block 10. The boys were in their early teens and had no place else to go. Camp activities for the younger people mainly involved sports and a weekly dance held in the recreation hall.
So I took to teaching my brother and his friends how to dance. It was just your basic two-step and square dance; that’s all they needed to learn.
Word got around that I was teaching the young boys how to dance to Duke Ellington’s music, and eventually, girls started to come around the office. The girls had heard what I was doing and wanted to meet the boys, so they asked me to be their go-between. I took pride in knowing that I got to teach the young kids how to dance!
Unfortunately, when we were allowed to leave camp, we could only take one suitcase with us, so I had to leave my Duke Ellington records behind. It would have been nice to have been able to keep those records and listen to them over the years.
About the contributor: Amy Morizono Eto was born in Soledad, CA in 1924. She was raised in Oakland, where her parents owned a grocery store. Amy graduated from University High School prior to being sent to Tanforan, then Topaz during World War II. After camp, she lived in Chicago, where she met her future husband, Frank. They married and relocated to Berkeley, where they raised their daughter, Susan. Amy was a secretary for the Berkeley Unified School District before retiring in the 1980s.
Copyright 2018, Amy Eto. All rights reserved.
Ruth,
What a great story…April 29 was such an important day for the Japanese people because of Hirohito, but on this side of the Pacific, it’s the “Duke’s” birthday…
So America…the Blacks teaching the next immigrants the music and dance movements that bind us…now it extends to the world! The Arts truly are our glue, our stabilizer! Thank you for Your work! You do it so well! Each individual has a “story” an important story…you give us space to express them. Until it is done, thank you, thank you, Ruth!
Sincerely with Gratefulness,
Mary:).?