<Begin Segment 20>

LH: So once you were getting to Minidoka, I mean, you were I guess nine, ten years old by this time.

FG: Nine.

LH: Nine years old. So you obviously were starting to go to school. What do you remember, of sort of going to school in camp?

FG: Oh, I don't know. It's actually a very... it was different and the same at the same time because if you went to school in the community, there were many, probably the majority, would be Japanese Americans, right? And then we went to Japanese school afterwards so that was all Japanese. So then we go to school in camp and it's all Japanese again. So it's kind of the same, but different.

LH: How is it different?

FG: Because they were people from other towns, right? I mean, we were, I was in school with people from Portland and Spokane and things like that. We used to walk to school, but then I think we all walked to school all the time, right. That's no different. Maybe the one difference that the school rooms had in camp that we didn't have in Seattle were the pot belly stoves.

LH: That they used for heating.

FG: Uh-huh, because the schools were just barracks. They were the same barracks, the same barracks that were our living quarters converted into a school. And the mess hall would be our lunchroom, and so it wasn't... different, but not different.

LH: So what did you think about, you mentioned going to school with these kids from Portland and Spokane and other areas. What did you sort of think of these new kids?

FG: Not very, not particularly. I think the most people that were outstanding in the class were people who were children of the administrators, and they were not Japanese.

LH: Really?

FG: Yeah. We had about two of them in the class and I think all the focus was on the two hakujin kids.

LH: So did you feel like you were competing with them to...

FG: Not, not really. The scholastic competition among Japanese is standard. It's always there, Japanese kids. And like from Bailey Gatzert, going from Bailey Gatzert to camp, it's the same thing. You are competing with the same people for probably the same areas like math and that sort of thing. Kind of not really very different, but I do know that when we came back from camp, we were all of us, I think we were very fortunate and I think we are ahead of the schools in Seattle. And so we could kind of relax the first year.

LH: So you think that the education you got in camp was actually better than what you got normally or that you would have gotten.

FG: I think so. I think so. That happens because when you have, I believe, that when you have a special, a select, group of people, they're all about the same level and so the competition is more closer. I don't know if it's keener, but it's closer. And so, therefore, the standards are higher.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.