<Begin Segment 46>

GY: So school was going -- and so they enjoyed that. And I enjoyed going to school. The teachers were very friendly. And I observed a music class or two other than, other classes, I should say. And this is, there was a neat class in this one school. It was a kindergarten class. And each one had a harmonica in, and in front of the class is a huge chart with notes on it, man. Notes. Golly. They played okay. This is kindergarten. That was amazing. Amazing. And they were singing solfeggio do-mi-so kind of thing, with the note. And one day on the bus in the back row, a group of kids, maybe four or five, was, they were singing, "When the Saints Were Going Home," mi-so-la-do -- I don't know what it is. Bah-bah-dah-dah. Dah-dah-dah-dah. Dah-dah-dah-dah. In solfeggio, something like that. And it was really amazing they're, the music education. But they didn't have the instruments, but they did have some keyboard, you know, kind of thing. And the tonette, harmonica. I didn't see too many large orchestras, so -- well, it's just too expensive. Now they do have them. So that was the music education, and they, and the physical education was very, very fascinating. I think it's patterned after European physical education. A lot of jumping, hurdling, dip -- gymnastics and so forth. That was neat, too. And art, science was kind of neat, too. They had group science teams like four or five, six kids working on an experiment, that kind of thing. And the teachers were very -- I thought very friendly, and it was a nice relationship between the teacher and the -- they were kidding around -- and the students. Kind of nice, I thought. Art, music, science, yeah... yeah, I guess that's what school was like.

AI: Excuse me --

GY: But in the meantime, Helen, what did she do as I went to -- school to school? Well, let's see. In the drudgery of the household, she went shopping every day to the local grocery store or the vegetable stand or the meat counter and so forth. And washing was a, a big chore. Eventually, we bought a sewing mach -- a washing machine. All it did was this. And eventually, when the washing was done, all the clothes were tangled, man, it's all sort of -- and just took hours to untangle the clothing after the spin-dry -- which was not very dry. Then she used to hang the clothing on these horizontal bamboo posts. Put their -- they'd poke through the arms all the, through kind of thing. And that was a chore. Then upper ones you had to use some kind of thing. And that was a chore that took a long time. And the clothing became dirty because the dirt was black.

And then every day about 4 o'clock, she went outside with some kindling and started the fire to heat the water for the bath. And the bathtub -- wooden tub, about so long and so wide. Up to here. So filled up with water with the hose, tiny, little water came through. And there was this fireplace down there, and they heated the water. And it took two or three hours to heat the water. And at that time in the household, there were five of us and Mr. and Mrs. Nishimura and two daughters, so we had nine people. We all took turns taking a bath. They'd start with the kids, two girls then two boy -- well, no, I think the boys had to do it separately. It was a tiny, little shack there with the tub. And it's just sooty with smoke, whatever. And maybe, maybe the boys took it separately, but the two girls, we could scrub them in there. And then Helen or I, and then either Mr. or Mrs. -- Mrs. first, and then maybe, and the girls would come in late -- the same water. Of course, we washed outside. That's the Japanese pattern. But for soaking nine of us. And so there's still warm water left. So the next day it was used for washing clothing. And that was the life in those days in Japan.

AI: Excuse me. I'm going to -- only because we're short on time, I'm going to move you ahead in the time machine here.

GY: Right.

<End Segment 46> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.