Leo T. reviewed on 6/14/2017 + 1775 more book reviews

There is no index and I wanted to look up what she says about the 101st Airborne as a friend of mine served there just after he joined up as a teenager.
The book starts well with a brief recounting of the 1987 reunion of the students at the high school, especially when she explains who met them at the front door. Note that they all were successful in their later life.
I was ten years old and in sixth grade when this came down--it was worrisome to kids all over the USA. She recounts how they were hassled constantly in the school.
In 1956 and 1957 I was slipping away to visit a friend from the old neighborhood--his family had moved to Boyle Heights--a couple of times a month. This was before the Immigration Act of 1965 and Boyle Heights was a well mixed neighborhood with people from all kinds of descent and a pretty nice place to be a kid. His family moved back East so I didn't go there so often.
This book reminds me too well of how Boyle Heights went downhill, with virtually all the Jewish, Nikei, Black, etc. families run out of the neighborhood. I assure you the present day people despise veterans today; I know of only one who is employed in the neighborhood, although there are rumors of a couple in the post office. My friend Stark, Roosevelt High class of 1975, says he was beat on many, many times. When this book came out it did not lead to any reexamination of the prevailing attitudes here--La Cultura Inmigrant Rules! In recent years I have been coming here just to 'show the flag'--non-Latinos are very rare. Watanabe, a Korean War vet who died last year, said there are a couple hundred Japanese Americans remaining. There has not been a minyin for Jewish worship since the 1990s....

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