<Begin Segment 6>

AI: Where did you go to grammar school, grade school?

GY: Grammar school was Bailey Gatzert, which was about four blocks away, on Twelfth Avenue and Weller Street. Again, it was part of the Japanese community. It was our school in that other than the Nisei children there, there may have been a few Chinese students there. I remember Billy Eng was one, was a friend of mine in school. And kind of admired him because he was handsome and he wore a nice clean pair of glasses, and very urbane in terms of his behavior and his clothing. But he was not a friend, close friend of mine. I didn't play with him at all. He was not part of the neighborhood, and I don't know where he lived.

But Bailey Gatzert was neat in that again, it was a place where there were friends there, Japanese faces where we didn't have to worry about what we ate or whatever. We, I guess we took sandwiches to, to school, peanut butter or sandwich meat with some lettuce and maybe fruit. We did not take rice balls, as many kids do nowadays because we were ashamed to take something like that because of the Americanization that started to take place slowly. Ms. Mahon was our principal. Rather short but very much -- I think she really enjoyed providing, not formal Americanization lessons but to teach us what we are, American citizens. And becoming more Americanized. And I didn't resent that at all. She didn't say, "You're not Japanese." But she encouraged us to speak English. "Speak more English. Speak more English." And I don't know how she stated that, whether she said, "Well, you're not Japanese anymore. You're American," kind of thing, but she encouraged us to speak more English.

And I remember in the lunchroom, she'd walk around and notice that we were slurping our tomato soup as Japanese do. [Laughs] And taught us how to use the soup spoon, dip it in very lightly to sort of pour the soup into the mouth. And that was the (extent) of our Americanization, I suppose -- or beginning, I should say, among other things. The teachers were, I thought, very much interested in teaching us what they had to teach. Art, music, reading and writing, arithmetic. And I didn't feel any kind of racial bias and discrimination on the part of the teachers. They were strict. Many of them were strict. But I think they felt that they, that we needed proper instruction. The teachers were very conscientious in those days.

I remember this, the music teacher, Miss Phelan, who had her hair worn up high, kind of dark eyes. And I think she was a very handsome woman, Miss Phelan, but very strict music teacher, who taught us to read music and to -- not to read too much technically, but read notes, sing our do-re-mi's kind of thing. Sang a lot of songs like "Santa Lucia" and, let's see. When -- let's see. "Johnny Comes Marching Home Again," tunes like that that were very, very much a part of the school, children's repertoire in those days, which I dearly miss. As a schoolteacher, we did sing many of those songs years later, but we'll go back to that later. So again, introduction to Western music. And she started a harmonica club. That was kind of neat. Introduction to instrumental music, to read notes, do-re-mi, and becoming much more sensitive to harmony and to singing in tune, in tune, I suppose, notes, et cetera, et cetera. And introduction to instrumental music. We played the Hohner Harmonica, I think, about twelve, maybe twelve little openings there. For 50 cents, it was called the Marine Band, the key of C. Today the same instrument is called the blues harp. And what used to cost 50 cents may cost maybe 23 dollars and 95 cents. And they don't play "America the Beautiful." They play the blues, down-home blues. And it sounds a little different from what we used to do. Washington School -- oh, yes.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.