<Begin Segment 11>

AI: Well, well, I'm going to take you back to, back to Sacramento and back to your younger years, because you had mentioned in another conversation about how, when you were about in the fifth grade, you were learning about U.S. history and civics, and that you had a conversation with your father and, and about democracy and I wonder if you could tell a little bit about that.

EH: Well, we, in fifth grade we were learning U.S. history and citizenship and we got into the political parties, the two political parties. So I came home and said to my father, "What party do you belong to? And who are you going to vote for?" And he said, "If, if I could vote, I would vote for So-and-so." And he never explained why he couldn't vote. And it wasn't until years later that I found out that Asians couldn't become citizens, so you couldn't vote. But my father being... having (been) reared, growing up, grown up basically in the U.S., and he really liked politics. He, he would read the paper and, and grumble about Hoover or whoever else. And I don't even remember the names of the candidates that ran in the '20s, but I, I remember mid-'30s. Gee, Roosevelt must have been in office by that time because we came in '30 and I was in the second grade, so three years later.

The Depression I do remember, because people were really having a hard time and, and they would come over and, and my father would be worried about business and, and he would write a check and he said, "That's all I could write." And somebody else said, "Well, at least you could write a check. I can't even write a check," meaning they weren't... they didn't have any money in the bank to write a check for. He... and he, my father got robbed twice, pick-pocketed. And that was probably more due to the Depression. We didn't... we hadn't had that kind of... but he came out... he withdrew some money, put it into his wallet, put it in his back pocket, and when he went to buy something at a dime store or something, his wallet was gone. And that, I think, I think his pocket was split, it was slit somehow.

AI: Do you, do you remember doing without things during the Depression?

EH: No. I think my parents were probably better off than a lot of people. I, I do know, I do remember two or three times we were in this lower flat that we lived in Sacramento. We got robbed two or three times because the windows were right off the... there was a patch of grass, but it was... and it was hot, so they were left open. And my father happened to take one of my younger sisters to the bathroom, and here was a guy in the kitchen. And he, he flew right out the open window in, in... that was probably the same window he came in from. But there was a... fresh cement about twenty feet away, and I don't know whether he didn't know that anyway, but he left footprints in that wet cement. And that, that kind of kind of thing happened a couple of times in that... but my father loved sports and loved swimming and he would take me swimming in the Sacramento River. But I never... he would try to teach me. I never really learned that well, but he loved to swim. And on one of these trips, he got back to the car and everything was gone. I, I don't remember that the window was broken, but somehow they got in. And so here he had to come back with, with wet trunks and barefoot and bare legs and that kind of thing.

But I, my mother, among other things, started the PTA in Sacramento at Lincoln School, and one of the reasons was because there were so many children who couldn't afford even the clothes. So she had me gathering shoes, worn out shoes from neighbors and friends, and I'd have to carry these great big grocery bags of, of shoes to, to the principal's office. And, let's see, we moved into the house across the street when I was nine, so I was still in second or third grade. And the principal would amass money from somewhere, and there was a Japanese shoe repair, a couple of Japanese shoe repair families, and she would take it to them and they would repair shoes.

The other thing I remember my mother being provoked about was the... and I think it probably happened to Japanese kids also. The mothers would knit wool, what they considered wool slips out of yarn, and Sacramento was too hot to be wearing wool anything. And she would, especially with the Chinese parents, she would, she would call and bring a youngster in and, and lift the dress up and, and my mother would say, "Too hot. Too hot." I don't know whether the Chinese mothers understood, but -- and I have a friend who talks about how she always had wool slips on. And I said, "Jeepers, Amy, how could you have stood that? I would have rebelled."

But Lincoln School was, was a fascinating, healthy environment, I think. We had a great music teacher in junior high school who, who trained Fumiko Yabe from the time she was a seventh grader because she had such a great potential. She had never taken any kind of lessons anywhere. Her mother was a seamstress. And all the way through junior high and high school, Ida North gave her almost personal lessons. And she really became quite a singer. On Pearl Harbor there happened to be a concert pre... let's see, Pearl Harbor (day) we, we were a freshman. I was a freshman at JC and Fumiko Yabe was in my class. And to give you a social instinct or climate of the time, for some reason... in this day and age in ordinary circumstances, now we would have gone to that concert, but for some reason none of us went to that concert. And the next day after Pearl Harbor, here was this full front page picture of Fumiko Yabe in a beautiful white gown singing "God Bless America." It just bugs me. But it made a beautiful... see, and I was so thankful that she was able to carry that off. And the Sacramento Bee was a very conservative paper, but it did her justice. And she kind of played that role all the way through. I mean, even in camp she was always performing.

And Ida North was our junior high school teacher, so she, she did marvelous, she, we had 180 junior high school choir, glee club, and we traveled all over the place, Christmas concerts, particularly. Even downtown Sea-, Sacramento in the wintertime we were singing. But she got her promotion, I think, from all this music that she provided in junior high school, and Fumiko Yabe, probably. There was another, Phyllis Duvall, who was also in our class, and she was like Kate Smith. She was like a miniature Kate Smith. She was buxom. From the time she was in second grade she, she was singing and won the Major Bowles contest, (an) amateur program, (a contestant) from Sacramento to San Francisco. And I remember in second grade we all wrote postcards to her to congratulate (her). There, there was no television so we couldn't have seen it, but radio-wise we did.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.