<Begin Segment 6>

EO: Aiko, let's go back to high school. What happened when you, in your high school? Tell me about a couple of incidents that happened.

AH: Okay. When I was going to high school -- this was Los Angeles High School -- we lived during that time in a very hostile environment, hostile to ethnic Japanese. There was a strong feeling of hostility against people of Japanese ancestry. Therefore, we had difficulties going, buying homes in certain areas, and this anti-Japanese feeling carried itself over into school. When the war broke out, after Pearl Harbor, as a matter of fact I think it was about a month after Pearl Harbor, I was reminded by one of my classmates a few years ago who came up to me and he said, "Don't you remember that Principal So-and-so called us" -- we, of Japanese ancestry, who are ready to graduate that summer -- "called us into his office and said, 'All of you don't deserve to graduate. Your people bombed Pearl Harbor.'" We were in a state of shock. He said, "Don't you remember?" I think I pushed that in the back of my mind and just tried to forget it. He had never forgotten it. He was bitter all these years, this friend of mine. The Japanese American students tried their best to be the best citizens, worked two hundred percent harder than everybody else, because we were always under scrutiny, disliked, so we were out to prove that we were just as good, if not better than the quote, "mainstream" students.

As a matter of fact, this young man, whose name was Shishino, he and I, we had known each other since grammar school days. We worked very hard to get good grades. We were able to reach the pinnacle of scholarly success for high school students by becoming members of the California Scholarship Federation, which was quite a thing at the time. And all of us worked very hard to be good students, to be good citizens. Therefore, after working for twelve years to reach the top of the mountain to graduate, after having lived through and in this hostile environment, then to have our high school principal talk to us like that was, in Hayawa Shishino's mind, the most devastating experience of his life, and his bitterness has carried him over all these, with him all these years. I know that I was really disappointed and devastated to think that I wouldn't be able to graduate and wear a cap and gown with all my other Caucasian friends. And to be deprived of those, of that diploma which we worked so hard for was a big blow to us. It was proof that the feeling we had been carrying all the time, sort a self-hatred for not being white, showed its, showed its ugly face and ugly head at that time. I think that I may not be alone in saying that I grew up with a certain amount of self-hatred, I could never be Betty Grable, I hated not to be blond, I hated not to, to enjoy the kind of attention that blonds got. And this school incident was another example of why we had the self-hatred, why it stayed with, remained with us through our lives.

EO: Did you ever get a diploma? Did you ever get your diploma?

AH: Yes. Oh, fortunate, wonderful. Mr. Shishino took steps, although it was forty-something, almost fifty years afterwards. He wrote, after all those years, after those decades, he wrote to the Los Angeles Board of Education and complained about the treatment he and our fifteen other members of our class received during the summer of 1942. And fortunately there was a young Japanese American on the Board of Education at that time, who took his complaint and his grievance seriously. He discussed the situation with other members of the Board of Education of Los Angeles and made arrangements to have a wonderful ceremony for those who were, who still survived from the, that class of summer 1942 in Los Angeles High School, and had a wonderful ceremony in Los Angeles High School for those of us who are now grandparents and great-grandparents. And oh, the funny part of this whole thing was that the member of the Board of Education whom Mr. Shishino contacted was my son-in-law. So he, when my son-in-law found out that I was a member of the class, of course, he made a special effort to make sure that this happened. And so we were presented our 1942 diplomas in 1989, I think it was. And that seemed to have set a trend, because I know that after that, other cities up and down the West Coast did the same thing. And even UC Berkeley, I think, two years ago, had a ceremony, and UCLA, a ceremony to honor those who would have gotten their degrees, or who were dishonored at that time and the school wanted to make up for it. So it turned out to be a lot of fun for those of us who were now grandparents to be receiving our high school diplomas.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 1994, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.