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TI: But there's something else you said that I wanted to follow up on. Yeah, you mentioned how in Prince Rupert you were maybe one of two or three other Japanese students in a class of twenty or twenty-four. Now you're in a class where they're all Japanese. I mean, from your perspective as a thirteen-year-old, was that, did it seem different?

HS: It was different.

TI: And how was that different?

HS: I had never been with so many Japanese people. I had never been with so many Japanese people, and so that it was an entirely new experience for me and for Harry and for many of the Japanese kids that were there. Because all of a sudden, here we were all the same, whereas before, you were a part of a general, a whole, a different community, a multicultural community, now you're all the same and we're all together in Hastings Park. So it was a different experience, and you met, you began to see kids from Victoria, kids from Cumberland, from the Vancouver Island area, kids from, some of the kids came even from the interior of B.C. The majority of them were, though, from the West Coast itself. Vancouver, we didn't meet that many from Vancouver because, of course, Vancouver kids and everybody were still staying intact in their present, in their various houses, and they were being gradually told that they had to move. The RCMP was going around...

TI: But going back to your class, so you're now all, all Japanese.

HS: All Japanese, that's right.

TI: And are there any examples that can sort of talk about how that might have been different than, than your other class? Was there anything that you can think of, of difference, by being in a class of all Japanese?

HS: Well, it became different when we actually left, left Hastings Park and went to a place like the camps, like New Denver where we went to, where all the, all the people that we were associated with were all in the same, we're all of Japanese ancestry. And the classes there were organized in, in a room, so that grades seven or eight, or that time, they had, they pretty well graduated you to, to finish the school so that you were going to the next grade. So I spent grade eight, of course, in New Denver where we had a room, and this was a grade eight class, we had, I think, two classes of grade eight. Not sure how many we had, but I think there were quite a few buildings that they had. But we were all of Japanese ancestry, so now it was a different milieu in terms of, of, well, in terms of scholastic competition, you might say. It wasn't the same as, as being in Prince Rupert, where the desire to excel was probably more prominent because we were a minority and, you know, you felt that you had to do your, do the best you can to make, more or less so you wouldn't let your side down, you might say. That would be, you know, I know that my parents were always concerned that we did well at school, and as I mentioned before, many of the Japanese kids in Prince Rupert were at the top of the classes. And, and they didn't want to, say, be at the bottom of the class or a poor student, because it reflected on the community. Whereas now, you were in a situation where all of you were the same in terms of race, and so there wasn't quite that competition to be ultra good or ultra, as a student, you were more concerned about, about your colleagues, about friendship, about getting to know people. About schooling, yes, we did, we still did spend, we did still strive to do well in our school, but it wasn't quite the same competition as if you were in a white school.

TI: Well, that's interesting. So when you were at Prince Rupert and you were a minority, you felt this pressure to perform more.

HS: Perform, because of their minority, in fact.

TI: But in general, when you were with these classes of all Japanese, was the scholastic achievement generally higher than you would find in Prince Rupert, or was it about the same?

HS: I would think it's about the same. I don't believe that we worked as hard, probably, in the internment camps, especially when we finally got our own little schools. Then later on, when you got, when I went out from the internment camp or before coming to the internment camp, I think I tried harder. And I think all the other kids had, that I knew, probably felt it a little more, 'cause we were pressured to do well at, at the school. 'Cause I think there was this general perception that people, you didn't want people to think that you, as being Japanese you were dumb, or you were, you were less than they were in terms of academic achievement. So when you got to the, got to the internment camp like New Denver, that sort of pressure on you was gone because now for all of us, all of a sudden, it was an entirely new environment. Yes, there's still some pressure to do well, and education was still important, and that was the only thing that they, they stressed upon us. Not so much that you had to be at the top of the class or anything like that, but that you have to get educated.

TI: Well, and how did that feel for you, to not have that kind of pressure to...

HS: Well, it certainly, it put less pressure on our... and we were much more carefree. And I think in the internment camp, certainly as far as kids are concerned, people under the age of twenty even, there wasn't this need to sort of excel and best yourself, someone else, mainly because you seem to be all in the same boat you might say. So it wasn't important that you were, you were better than someone else, because in actual fact, you couldn't be better than someone else, because when we started, we were all, now, whether you happened to be a son of a doctor or the son of a fisherman or the son of a janitor, you're still in the internment camp at the same level. It wasn't the same as being in the outside world. And so we were protected to a large degree from that stress of, of, the stress of, say, even when we went to high school. We tried to do well, no question, we tried to get a good education and we were always being, we were always being told by our parents, "The one thing they can't take away from you is education. So if you can get that, no matter what happens to you after, get educated and then you can compete as a person in the overall general society." And I think that was certainly drilled into us, and it was always something that was in the back of our minds, I think, that that, that to get educated was important, to make yourself educated would help you in terms of when you returned to the general Canadian society, which we expected to do. However, there was, there was always this, there was this sort of uncertainty as to what was going to become to us. But many of us were, we were so concerned with the daily living that we didn't even, you didn't think about the future.

<End Segment 32> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.