<Begin Segment 17>

TI: Let's talk a little bit about school. After you came back from Japan...

HS: I came, I went to kindergarten, and I was there for, I think I was there when I was five and six, I think it might have been two years of kindergarten or something. It seems to me it was, it wasn't until I was, I was almost seven before I went to, well, in a way, it went, when I was six, when I was six, I was enrolled into, into grade one, but I remember there was only so many seats, there was twenty-four seats or something in this classroom, and I gave, went to school one day, and I was there for a day, couple days, so maybe a week. And then there was this guy, big kid, who must have been about two or three years older than most of the other kids, but he was really dumb, you know. They finally decided, somebody, either their family, insisted that he had to go to school. And so since I was, I was the youngest in the class, he took my seat, so I had to go back to kindergarten. I think that's what happened. So I was almost seven when I went to, to grade one. And Rupert Clap was still there. [Laughs] He was still in grade one.

TI: [Laughs] Still there. I mean, that's... and what was the name of your school, that elementary school?

HS: It was called Borden, Borden Street School, and it was about, it was up on a long, it was, Prince Rupert was built on large hills, so part of the town was up on the, on a big hill, it was all rock, rock hills. We're talking about rock hills with a lot of trees, but still rock. And it rains a lot in Prince Rupert. We're, Prince Rupert was about, although we never, hardly ever saw snow, snow would come maybe a very short time in the wintertime, maybe for about a day or a week, and that was it. And the rest of the time, it was always sort of rain or mist. (...) We had about a hundred inches of rain a year, so if you figure that out, that meant every third day it would rain. [Laughs] And so, and in between it would be cloudy. We didn't see the sun very often.

TI: And a hundred inches, I mean, when it rained, it rained quite a bit.

HS: Oh, well, it rained, sometimes it rained a lot, but then a lot of times it would be like raining a little bit continuously.

TI: Because just as a point of comparison, Seattle, where people think it rains a lot, a hundred inches would be more than twice the rainfall that we get in Seattle.

HS: Oh, yeah. Well, it, where, in Victoria, they get about forty inches of rain. So that's the difference between...

TI: Yeah. So describe your class in terms of, I mean, were there other Japanese in the class?

HS: There were always other Japanese, there were Japanese in every class.

TI: And roughly about, what percentage were Japanese?

HS: Well, there would be only about, in my class, there were only a couple of people, a couple of 'em. I think a couple girls.

TI: So about ten percent, usually?

HS: Huh?

TI: About ten percent of the --

HS: Ten percent, maybe. But they were, it was, the total class, Borden High School, there would be about, of the, of the say about 100, 150 students that were there, there'd be about, maybe about twenty Japanese kids going through all the classes. Be about, yeah, somewhere around 150, maybe about ten percent.

TI: Ten to fifteen percent.

HS: Yeah, ten to fifteen percent. And, you know, it's interesting, in those days, and I went from grade one to grade six at that time, and there was a principal by the name of Miss Mills, she was a Victorian person. You know, she had that, she wore that, she was a spinster, tall, she sort of looked like, looked like your impression of what a witch would look like. Long, big hooked nose, and she had that look about her, thin, scrawny, and, but (...) she was a disciplinarian, but very fair, and very well-liked by all the students. (...) She was never malicious in the way she would approach you. Anyhow, Miss Mills was principal of the school, and the teacher that impressed me the most was a grade three teacher, was a Mrs. McKay. She was, in fact, about the same age as, as our principal, but she was married and had her own, she was much more a gentle-type person. But as a result, probably more personable, whereas Miss Mills was, as I say, she ran the school and she ran it, ran it well, but she had to be, you had to listen to what she said.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.