Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Rudy Tokiwa Interview II
Narrator: Rudy Tokiwa
Interviewers: Tom Ikeda (primary), Judy Niizawa (secondary)
Location: Honolulu, Hawaii
Date: July 2 & 3, 1998
Densho ID: denshovh-trudy-02-0021

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RT: See, then about that time, then school started in there, in camp. So I says, "Okay, you gotta go to school, gotta get an education." So when I was going to high school in there, I was, I took up Ag, agriculture, because I looked out, I says, "Gee, as Japanese, what kinda break we gonna have anywhere?" So I figured, well, I'll be, I'll take agriculture, because then you've gotta chance of getting a job or something. And so I was, we took Ag. And then this, Minoru Sakaguchi was an agriculturalist. He was our instructor. In there, you didn't need a college degree to teach. All he did was, he went through high school. And so he taught us for about four months.

And then all of a sudden, he says, "I got a job outside. I'm gonna go to it." We're talking, "Well, who's gonna teach us?" So finally, I and another guy, we went to the principal. And we asked him, "What's gonna happen to us?" So he says, "Well, I hear that you two are pretty good in that class. You know quite a bit about agriculture." So we told him, "We should be, been working the damn thing all our life, almost." So they said, "Well, why can't you guys teach it?" So we were the Ag teachers. And the way we'd do it is, he'd teach one day and I'd teach the next day. Because we gotta read all, you can't be in front of the guys and tryin' to tell 'em somethin', and the guy asks you a question, and you can't stand there and say, "I don't know." [Laughs] So whatever the subject was, one day I'd read the book on it, and then the next day I'd teach that. And that day when I'm teaching, he'd be readin' the books. [Laughs] And we did get along. We did pretty good.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.