<Begin Segment 8>

DH: You went to the high school with Caucasians then.

JH: Yes, I did.

DH: I'm sorry, before the war; it would be grade schools then. So you had your life here at Bainbridge Gardens, and then you would get on a school bus and go to school with everybody else.

JH: That's correct.

DH: What was that like?

JH: Well, we always had very small classes all my life and that was because we were born -- I was born in 1933, which was shortly right after the Depression, and people weren't having loads of kids in those days. So we always had small classes, and my class, at what was called Pleasant Beach School at the time, was very small and very intimate. And there were only three Japanese Americans in that class of approximately twenty-some, I don't remember the count. But they -- I don't remember any negative things that ever happened. I think I remember more the fact that we ate very menial looking sandwiches, with -- we even, I remember even eating potato sandwich, and sometimes a sandwich with just a thin piece of jello or jam in between the bread where everybody else had meat, and I remember that. And once in a while the school would give free hot lunches, and that was the most memorable thing that I can remember about school is that, "Gee whiz, we got these nice free hot lunches," and they tasted so good. But, otherwise.... Let's see, I was I guess in the second grade when the war broke out, and I don't really have that many recollections of my association with the classmates as far as that period is concerned.

DH: Was it hard to speak English at school and Japanese at home?

JH: Not for me. I had no problem that I can remember. I don't remember ever being embarrassed by that situation. I know in many cases that was a real problem because a lot of the young, [Interruption] a lot of the young Niseis spoke only Japanese at home, and they had a difficult time with the English language when they got to school.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.