<Begin Segment 9>

TI: Let's talk a little bit about schools, because later on you become a schoolteacher. So I'm curious, what was your, what was school like for you? Did you enjoy school?

MH: I loved it. I loved school, and I was teacher's pet in many of the grades, so naturally I liked school. [Laughs] And I remember the first day, my dad took me to kindergarten, and the teacher played a piece on the piano, said, "Go around the room and skip." So I got out there and I skipped, and my dad was so proud of me, because I was the only one that did it. [Laughs] But anyway, this, so it was right here, Washington School. And I liked school all the way through. Now, I'm just -- since you started to talk about the middle school, I'm sure we went through the eighth grade, but you have to, what? From eighth grade do you go in, ninth grade is high school?

TI: Right, ninth grade is high school.

MH: Okay, then we went directly to the high school, to Garfield High School.

TI: So at Washington School, do you, did you have any favorite teachers?

MH: The kindergarten teacher, but I have forgotten her name. Shoemaker? But no, not really, not really. There were some characters there that I still remember. One would send me to the -- we were right across the street from the Wonder Bread bakery, we would smell that bake, bread baking. My teacher would send me every day with a nickel to go and buy her the day-old bread, so that was my job. And we could never do a thing like that now as a teacher, send a child across the street to go to the bakery. But we did that, and they were all very good to us, you know, those teachers.

TI: Now, was there anything that you could remember that really influenced you to want to become a teacher later on?

MH: Well, I, later on, I worked in the principal's office as a clerk, but I was in school already then. I think that was the only field that I thought would, I could possibly be in. Because when I went in high school, when I went to the, to the counselor's office, I said, she said, "Well, what are you gonna do after you graduate?" I said, "I want to go to college." "To college? Where do you want to go?" And I couldn't think of anyplace except I used to get the magazines with Wellesley, advertising Wellesley College. I said, "I'd like to go to Wellesley." "Wellesley?" [Laughs] And so she just brushed me off, said, "No, college isn't, there are no colleges you could go to." So I didn't aspire to too much at that time, and then we had to move to Ellensburg. We got so poor...

TI: Well, before we go there, I wanted to just talk about, so this counselor... so at this point, you had aspirations to go to college, and looking at things, at really top colleges in the country.

MH: Yeah. [Laughs]

TI: And it wasn't until the counselor said, "No, this isn't for you." Now, was it because you were a woman, or was it because you were Japanese American?

MH: Both.

TI: So it wasn't common --

MH: Especially Japanese. She, she didn't think that the Japanese could go on. They'll all become gardeners or housekeepers or something. It just didn't dawn on them that any one of us would become professional people in those days. No one imagined us as professional people.

TI: So did you get that same feeling from your teachers, or was it more from this counselor, who...

MH: The counselor, yeah. The teachers, we never talked to them about college.

TI: Well, how about your father? When you talked about college and things, what did --

MH: My father never encouraged us. He said, "The boys must go, make a profession. You girls..." no, he didn't believe in education for the girls.

TI: Now, amongst your siblings and friends, did they think about going to college? Your, your girl's club, your older sisters?

MH: In elementary school we did not. In high school, yes, they did think about it, and many of my friends did go to the University of Washington. That's where I should have tried to get in. But then we moved to Ellensburg, so I went to Central Washington.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.