<Begin Segment 21>

LH: Well, what else do you remember of sort of your everyday life in camp? And besides going to school, what else did you do for the spare time that you had?

FG: We used to go swimming in the canal, wading in the canal. I couldn't swim really very well. There also was swimming hole that I went to see. I never went into it because I really wasn't a good swimmer. That's what we did in the summertime. The different churches, on Sundays the different churches had church services and we went to Sunday school, I guess. There was a canteen. I think there were three canteens, I think, and they sold food articles, I guess, and not too much clothing. Maybe some toilet articles. I think that. There wasn't, I can't remember an awful lot being sold. Let's see...

LH: Well, you had mentioned a little just briefly that you had went to Sunday school. Now, was this a Buddhist Sunday school? Was it a Christian Sunday school?

FG: I went to a Buddhist Sunday school. There were Christian Sunday schools, too, so there were different denominations.

LH: So what was it like going to this Buddhist Sunday school?

FG: Partly in Japanese and partly in English like it would be here.

LH: Well, it seems strange to me 'cause it didn't seem like, from my perceptions, it doesn't seem like Sunday school is something that's really a Buddhist following. Is that not true or is that...

FG: No. The Buddhist church movement in the United States basically, especially the Jodo Shinshuu, basically followed the Christian pattern and so if they have Sunday schools then we had Sunday school. If you had pews or chairs, we had pews and chairs. And the service was set up kind of patterned after the Christian. It's different than in Japan. Japan doesn't, I don't think they have Sunday school, but then we always had Sunday school here and so it's more of the same.

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