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MA: So your group of friends, was it mostly other Niseis?

KY: Mostly, uh-huh, school friends.

MA: And you attended Wapato grade school?

KY: Correct.

MA: Was there only one grade school in Wapato, then?

KY: I can, I think there was just the one, uh-huh.

MA: How far away was the school from your house?

KY: Well, let me see. We moved three times that I can remember.

MA: Within Wapato?

KY: Because we were leasing the land, so we'd lease it and maybe work the land two or three years, and then we would move to another area, work another, so I remember moving three times, but always went to the same school, so that was the only school. But the last one, I remember it was like two miles. Yeah, two miles.

MA: How did you get to school?

KY: We walked. We walked, yeah.

MA: And was that pretty common for the farmers, do you know, to move around a lot?

KY: I, I don't know, because see, we, my dad couldn't own the land, we had to just lease it. And being that there was no boys in the family... well, some, I think some families, probably they had older children that... well, no, that couldn't be right, either, because you had to be twenty-one to own land.

MA: Oh, I see, so maybe --

KY: Niseis, and I don't think there was too many families that had a twenty-one-year-old son. But I do remember we used another family's son's name to lease the land. So I don't know, I don't know. I don't think that we're, I don't think we're the only ones that leased it. I'm sure there was other people.

MA: So you used a...

KY: But I remember moving three times to different areas. I'm going to have to find out more. [Laughs]

MA: But the farms would mainly, the products that you would produce would be the same?

KY: Everybody raised the same thing, uh-huh. They all raised the same thing.

MA: So what are some memories that you have from attending grade school, Wapato grade school?

KY: Well, I remember we just played with the Japanese kids; we didn't play too much with the Caucasians. We would take, you know, my mom would make omusubi bento, you know, rice, and my friend and I, we would just go behind the, the bleachers or someplace and eat our rice ball. We didn't want people to see what we were eating, you know. So we just, we just kind of stuck together, the Japanese kids all stuck together. But we did have some Caucasian friends, but the Japanese just kind of stayed with our own group.

MA: And what types of things would you and your friends do for fun?

KY: At the school? Oh, we, we participated in all school activities, PE, everything.

MA: What, do you remember what, I guess, percentage of the students were, were Japanese American versus Caucasian versus another race?

KY: Percentage, okay.

MA: Or just, you know, approximately.

KY: There was quite a few Japanese in my class. I would say out of the whole class of, say, twenty-five, thirty, there was maybe ten of us. So there was quite a few Japanese in Wapato in those days.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.