<Begin Segment 6>

SS: What were you like as a kid? I can imagine that you didn't take much guff from anybody.

EW: I don't think I did either. But I put in my own share of work, but we all did. So, I don't know, I was allowed to have fun. When I finished my work I could do what I wanted.

SS: Did you ever get into any mischief?

EW: Oh boy, I remember a Halloween. That's why I laugh, because I read about when we were kids we used to do some terrible things, and kids don't do that now. We had a principal and oh, we just didn't care for him very much, so we dumped garbage on his porch and then run like everything. We just had a lot of fun.

SS: Did you ever get caught?

EW: No. [Laughs] I don't know if he ever knew who did it or anything, because we went to Sunday school, and church, and I don't think he would think that we would do anything bad like that. We thought it was fun.

SS: Did you ever regret doing that?

EW: Oh, no. No. [Laughs]

SS: What were you like as a little girl?

EW: I don't remember very much of that. Oh, I know, I had a doll, a beautiful doll, and one Christmastime we had a fire and I lost that doll. And then we had a flood in Burlington and we'd go in rowboats through the town. And I did get hit by a car. It was the wife of the theater owner. I have a scar in my head yet. But she treated me well after that, and really tried to make up for it.

SS: What happened? Were you on a bicycle, were you walking?

EW: No, I don't know what, how it happened. I never found out why. She was probably driving an old Ford, you know. [Laughs] I don't know how she did it.

SS: Did your family have a car back then?

EW: Yeah, we had quite a few different cars. I can't remember what kind. But they were... Whippets? I don't know. But that's when they had running boards, too.

SS: Did you ever learn how to drive back then?

EW: I did. And I'd get about 25 cents worth of gas, you know, one gallon of gas. And I learned how to drive.

SS: Do you miss the rural lifestyle?

EW: Well, I don't want to get too rural, you know, outhouse and all that stuff. But I kinda do, because we knew everybody in town. And it didn't take that much money to have fun. Maybe we went to a movie about once a month. And we had our church groups and picnics and played games. We didn't have all the distractions that kids have now. We didn't have TV, we had radio.

SS: Were you a good student?

EW: Yes, I think so. I really loved school. I had some great teachers. One in particular, my English teacher. And I think that's where I learned to enjoy books. And I can, oh, my spelling is pretty good.

SS: Did you have any favorite books or movie stars when you were growing up?

EW: Oh, that's when they had Fred MacMurray and Ray Milland, and Clark Gable, and they don't have any like them anymore. They're gone... oh, like Shirley Temple and Elizabeth Taylor, when she was young, nothing like what she is now. But they were my favorite.

SS: Did you hang movie posters in your house like a lot of teenagers?

EW: Probably, probably. Uh-huh, uh-huh. But I remember my father loved Western. And he would sneak off to the movies, maybe once a week. And maybe he might say, "Well, I'm going to the show." Well, if he did, well, if we wanted to go, he would take us. But I don't... it kind of, I don't know how he understood what was going on, but there's not that much plot in a Western film anyway. But he liked, liked them. That was his form of relaxation. And then, too, we had the other Japanese family living in Burlington -- my parents used to, they'd go visiting back and forth. And I could remember my father carrying me on his back and walking a few blocks to visit. They would, Mrs. Akita would always bring out her baking, cookies and cake and whatever. And it was always fun to go there.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 1996 Densho. All Rights Reserved.