<Begin Segment 19>

AI: Well, so then eventually you started school in Tule Lake?

BS: Uh-huh.

AI: Tell me about that.

BS: Well, it was, I'd say they weren't prepared, 'cause all they had were chairs. I remember chairs, but they weren't folding chairs, they were like, oh, I don't know, they were made out of plywood or whatever. So we sat in those but when we wrote we had to kneel on the floor and write on the seat of the chair. That was... I don't know how long that lasted until maybe we got more furniture.

AI: And you had finished third grade in Hood River, so you would have been starting fourth grade?

BS: Fourth grade.

AI: In Tule Lake?

BS: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

AI: And who did you have for a teacher?

BS: There, I think it was, I think she, I think it was Mrs. Harkness. I think that she was, she was our teacher. It was a Caucasian. She was very kind. I think she, maybe her husband was something to do with the administration, but she was very kind.

AI: And so then what else do you recall from school there?

BS: I don't remember that much in Tule Lake school. I don't remember, I remember more Minidoka than Tule Lake.

AI: So as you were going to school and in some ways having, not really a normal life, but you would get up and it would...

BS: Uh-huh.

AI: What would a typical day be like at, when you were going to school in Tule Lake? You'd get up with your family and go out for...

BS: For breakfast. See, I don't remember that, but I know for breakfast I would go with my parents, with my mother and father and maybe my grandfather. And they had, they had different shifts. And my brothers and my other brothers and sisters, I don't know when they went, but I always went with my mother and father. And then my older, my sister Ruth was the oldest at the time and she was like a waitress, she waitressed. We were in Block 67 and she waitressed in Block 69. And I don't know what my, I don't know what my brother did, my brother Paul did, if he, if had any duties. But my father was like foreman of the janitors, so I don't know, he, if he, somehow he had a bicycle. And he would deliver like Dutch cleanser and brushes and toilet paper and Fels Naptha soap to the different, I don't know what, how large of an area he covered, but he would deliver those things. So I remember that, on my birthday, which is Memorial Day, we would get, they would close the mess hall for, must have been lunch, so we would get a box, box lunch. And so, for my, on certain holidays; and so on Memorial Day, which is my birthday, we would get a box lunch so my friends would come over and then my brother's friends and my sister's friends would come over and we'd have a birthday party. And my sister Ruth would, I don't know what kind of game she had, probably Bingo or something. And the prizes were like some of the supplies that my dad had like toilet paper, and, at least we had prizes anyway. [Laughs]

AI: Oh, that's something to remember.

BS: Uh-huh.

AI: Well, what about other kinds of celebrations? Even though you were in camp and this was Tule Lake, do you recall anything from Christmas, that first Christmas in camp in 1942?

BS: See, I don't remember...

AI: Or New Year's of '43?

BS: No, I don't remember at Tule Lake.

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