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AI: Well, now in, when you were nine, that would have been about 1927. Could you describe a little bit about what school life was like at that time? It's so different now. What was the traditional approach to teaching and learning in those days?

RC: It was wonderful. Your teachers were your friends. They became part of your life. And when the principal heard about what had happened to my father, my twin and I were under his care, (this) gives you an idea of the relationship between the elementary school in those days to what it is now, where it's a very impersonal kind of thing. All of our teachers reached out to us in one way or another. They were hard times. We lived in east Sacramento, just at the border of the city where country life came into being. There were Japanese gardens, vegetable gardens, strawberry beds. Many youngsters came to school without breakfast during the Depression. The PTA tried their best to have luncheons for children (who) didn't have any lunch when they got to school. And the Japanese farmers would show up in the morning with vegetables for vegetable soup. And there was a butcher shop nearby and he always saved the bones to give a little meaty quality to the soup. (...) I can still see us all sitting down to a nice warm bowl of soup which was really very good for all of us. But the teachers, each teacher that I had in that school (were well-liked).

(About) the principal... (...) he and his wife had no children and they were very interested in my twin and me. When I left the relocation center and came back home to go to school, I wasn't going to (...) go back into teaching. I (started) working at an air force base in Sacramento in the payroll office when somebody called my name, "You're wanted on the telephone." I went up and here was my former principal (on the phone). (He) was superintendent of schools by that time. He says, "Bob, your name is going to the Board of Education tonight and I am telling you you're going to be going to Sutter Junior High School to be one of the teachers there in English." And I said, "Oh, Mr. Burkhart, I was planning on going back to school." "No, Bob. You're going to go to Sutter Junior High School." Well, I couldn't say no.

AI: So that was --

RC: That's why I spent the rest of my life as a teacher.

AI: Well, so that was quite a relationship that --

RC: It was.

AI: -- you had there?

RC: This is, this is the kind of feeling in education that we had in those days.

AI: Right.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.