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AI: But at this point, so you're in high school, and I wanted, just wondering. You're the oldest in your family.

EH: Uh-huh.

AI: What were your plans? Were you, you had mentioned earlier that both your parents had stressed education, they had valued education. And I was wondering, what were, as you were in high school, what were you planning to do after graduation?

EH: Well, I'm afraid that in my era -- and maybe with a lot of my friends or that period -- we would have, we would have liked to go to college and, and I think I did gear myself for taking college prep, but in reality, I knew that older friends were having trouble landing jobs. In fact, I had a boyfriend almost all through the three years of high school who was a year or two older than I was, and he went to business school after, after graduating high school. Finished, but could never get a job. Could not get a job in bookkeeping or accounting, whatever, and he was really bitter and would talk to me about, about the country not really being our country and not really being treated with an equal chance. So I learned... I think I learned from him the first time the term "yamato damashi," which is loyalty to some extent to Japan or culture. And he came from a Buddhist family and, and my coming from Presbyterian also... to some extent his upbringing was a little bit different, but in Sacramento everybody knew everybody. My mother knew of his family, and when somebody would see us on a date and it would get reported to my mother, my mother was able to say, "Oh, that's So-and-so." And then she would say to me, "I'm sure glad you told me that you were, who you were going with," or something. I never actually went out much with anybody else. But anyway, that was an eye-opener about discrimination and, and prejudice.

My parents, I think, never really emphasized that kind of thing, I think as a protection. That they didn't want us developing complexes, but I know that when we were in, well, must have been a senior in high school or later high school or into freshman year in college, because we were building that new church, we were... I guess we were still in the old church and we were in the process of building the new church. My older friends were saying to my mother at some... once in a while my mother would, I had a piano teacher who would come out to the house to teach sometimes. Usually I was at her house, but I, I know at one time she and her sisters were in our house and they were talking about job difficulties and, and the future. And my mother was saying, "Well, realize that in the last five years, So-and-so and So-and-so and So-and-so have been able to get state jobs." And that was beginning when... I was probably in high school when the first Nisei state workers got in. So that was one potential hope, and I don't know why this guy didn't, this boyfriend didn't try for a state job, but anyway, he really was bitter. I also had kind of contributed to that in that I didn't go to senior ball with him and that kind of thing. So I was, I've always a carried a kind of a guilt complex about the end. But he was really very patient and was a good influence for me, generally speaking. But it was true that at least the state was, was beginning to open up.

This Mrs. Hopley, and I'm really get off the tangent, but the principal at elementary school, the Japanese community was so beholding to her that they collected funds and collected enough that they gave her a trip to Japan, and she came back and would stop at every classroom and talk about what she learned and the experiences. It was kind of amazing. But there was that, that kind of entrenched loyalty about Lincoln School also, that the teachers also were pretty loyal to us, I think. It was a... I think it was a good school for its, particularly for its day. But going into high school we had, we had a Japanese student clubs, the Chinese had Chinese student clubs, and...

AI: Was there much mixing? I mean, were... your Girl Reserve group was all Japanese --

EH: Uh-huh, uh-huh.

AI: -- American girls, and as you mentioned there were the Chinese clubs. Were there any clubs where it was ethnically mixed, especially white kids and Asian kids and, and other kids?

EH: Only in schools; honors programs or chemistry club or French club, that kind of thing. And I'm not sure that there was much social mixing even then, though they... I think they enjoyed each other's company. When, the year I was, we were a senior, I wasn't ever aware that, that minority groups became part of the pep squad or the "peperettes" or the yell leaders. And that year, my senior year there were. I had a half a dozen kids who were, who would, were cheerleaders or pep squad.

AI: So that was a noticeable change.

EH: (Yes). And it was, it was good. I, I guess I have to say there were three or four. I remember when my... when Ralph was teaching at Garfield, the first, I think the first Asian kids became cheerleaders. And that was in '60, I mean, he was, he was class advisor for '60. He went there in '58. But I remember Junx Kurose saying to Ralph, "Are you sure? What are the teachers saying?" or something. And there was some criticism of... even then, in the '60s, of Sanseis being cheerleaders, because that wasn't something that Japanese girls did. "That's not very ladylike," was the kind of attitude.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.