<Begin Segment 19>

AI: In fact, could you describe maybe what a typical day was like once school started? What, from the time you woke up, what would your typical school day look like?

RC: Well, I'd have breakfast, go back to my room and get the material that I had brought that I'd worked on that evening before. Visualize class, core classes of fifty-five youngsters.

AI: That's a large class.

RC: There were many papers. There was much work that had to be prepared for them. Some needed a little extra help. One of the pleasures was the public speaking class because of the wide range of subjects could be entered into and the youngsters had a lot of enthusiasm for it. One of my favorites was, I just saw, Ninomiya, I just saw him this morning. I said, "Are you in the hotel?" He (said), "No, I'm staying with my sister here." Calvin Ninomiya. What a wonderful career he has had. Are you going to interview him?

AI: Not this time, but, unfortunately.

RC: He's had a fabulous career and he's handled life beautifully. But, I'd go down in the morning before any of the youngsters arrived. And after school, we worked, we worked a regular eight to five day. And (got) things on our, so-called blackboard, you know, for the next day. And if I had time I would -- and it was good weather -- I would be planting a garden around (...) my room (the) end, and then by the porch I would plant flowers. And everybody thought that was funny that somebody would be planting flowers. But I always grew flowers. That was my fun. And they finally liked the idea and helped me pull weeds and helped me water, and so... (...) it was an altogether different teaching experience, because I had never taught a class that had more than thirty youngsters in it, usually twenty-eight to thirty. And then, almost double! And to learn the names. Some that did not have the English name, that had the Japanese names! Of course the Japanese names, boy, I knew them, but I found out there were far more than I thought was possible. And as I see people walking around with their signs here, those last names are amazing.

AI: It must have been quite a challenge.

RC: It was a real challenge. But I loved every minute of it. And when the time came for me to leave I realized that there was a reason for my leaving, that the numbers were dwindling and the War Relocation Authority were keeping husband and wives that they had hired because they had two teachers (...). And it simplified things.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.