Densho Digital Archive - Mitsuye May Yamada - Joe Yasutake - Tosh Yasutake Interview (denshovh-ymitsuye

<Begin Segment 17>

MY: So, you know, all the time we were on Beacon Hill at either the Beacon Hill school and then we went to Cleveland High School. Mike went to Franklin High School.

TY: Yeah.

MY: And Cleveland High School had very few Japanese. And, and one -- a theor-, a theory that I have is that we were not a threat. You know, there were so few of us in numbers.

TY: And we were pretty quiet and pretty -- you know, studious --

MY: Yeah.

TY: -- and all that, so I think that's true.

MY: Yeah. And so I mean -- I think that because of that, there weren't as many incidents that you -- that we recall anyway from, in our, in our memory. And the only thing that I remember from Cleveland High School was that -- I think around the time -- and it was way before I was ready to graduate, but towards the, in the 1930s, all of the valedictorians and salutatorians in Seattle of, they would have these, all the schools in Seattle -- were Japanese Americans.

TY: Yeah, yeah.

MY: And, and so when I was about a junior --

TY: Yeah, that, and then that was in Garfield High School, Broadway High School.

MY: Franklin.

TY: Franklin.

JY: Cleveland?

MY: No, Cleveland wasn't --

TY: Cleveland didn't have that many Nihonjin going there, so I don't think that was the --

MY: And so we were going to Cleveland High School.

TY: Yeah.

MY: And then I remember there was a, a protest among the parents that the only reason why the Japanese Americans were getting the --

TY: Being the valedictorian?

MY: -- having the valedictorians because they, the way that they determined that was by grade point average.

TY: Yeah.

MY: And, and the only reason why we got straight A's was because we didn't do anything else except study.

TY: Oh, oh. I don't remember that.

MY: The Japanese American students didn't do anything. And the fact is that most of us, I was involved -- we were involved in kind of the extracurricular activities --

TY: Uh-huh.

MY: -- in Cleveland. But in some of the schools, the students were not -- Japanese American students were not eligible for student clubs and football...

TY: Well, they had, they had Hi-Y -- was it Hi-Y Club? Was that --

JY: That was in my day. We had Hi-Ys.

TY: I don't think --

JY: I don't know if you had Hi-Ys.

TY: No, I, I think they did --

JY: Did they?

TY: -- but I think that in some schools they didn't accept Nihonjin.

MY: Yeah, or...

JY: That could be.

MY: Yeah.

JY: That could well be.

MY: And then the student council, I remember, was, was by election.

TY: Yeah, yeah.

MY: You know, the, the members, the present members elected other students. And so the fact is that many of the Niseis didn't have -- were not too involved in outside student activities beside doing academic work. And so there was a movement when I was a senior to include student activities, to include --

TY: Oh.

MY: -- outside --

TY: For evaluating --

MY: -- extracurricular activities in addition to --

TY: Academic.

MY: -- academic grade-point average to determine the salutatorian and valedictorian. And I, and I remember we, we went to camp -- Nao and I, we were wondering. She was, she used to worry a lot about whether she --

TY: Yeah Nao is, Nao Okuda was a neighbor of ours and a good friend of May.

MY: And we were kind of in comp-, I didn't feel -- I was not at all competitive, but she, she was wondering if, you know, which one of us, and so it -- and that, of course, that's, problem was very quickly solved because we were in camp. We were evacuated before graduation. And --

TY: Yeah.

MY: And, but I remember very distinctly that movement was in pla-, was boiling -- becoming an issue during that year. And they were going to change the, the qualification.

JY: And then they, and then everybody went to camp, so they didn't have to have that anymore. [Laughs]

MY: They didn't, yeah, they didn't worry -- oh, well, of course, I didn't hear anything after that because I, we were gone, but --

JY: It'd be interesting to see what they -- yeah.

MY: What happened, yeah. But then I remember -- Nao remembers that the principal of the school came to camp to give us the diploma and --

TY: He did what?

MY: -- strange enough, she remembers this, the stranger -- that the principal came to camp to our --

TY: Cleveland High School principal?

MY: Yeah, the principal. And she -- that's what she said. And, and not too long ago she said she remembers that --

TY: What was his name?

MY: I don't, I don't think she remembers either. But I do remember... do you remember Alice Skelly or something like that?

TY: Alice who?

MY: Skelly.

TY: No.

MY: Somebody like that. Well, there, there was one of the --

TY: Who is she? A student or teacher?

MY: Yeah, student.

TY: Oh.

MY: One of the student who did become -- I don't know whether she was valedictorian or salutatorian -- wrote us a letter in, in camp to tell us that, "If it hadn't been for you, that I would not be here," so --

TY: Well, you were -- yeah, if you had graduated class, you would have been valedictorian.

MY: I don't know. And -- I don't know. But it was, it was kind of interesting, you know, that -- that whole scenario of the --

TY: Uh-huh.

MY: -- of that culture, but...