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TI: So this is, so I'm thinking, so the nuns and the priests at Notre Dame High School did this incredible job. I mean, did the community ever acknowledge them while this was happening or afterwards?

HS: Well, the funny thing about it is that while it was going on, the education, they appreciate the fact that they were, they were being, educating their kids, but the nuns also decided that they had to bring a little bit of culture and education to the women of the camp. And they put on cooking classes and things, and as a great, one of the paintings I do is called "The French Cooking Class." Their, the nuns were very enthusiastic about doing everything that was, they thought would improve our lives, and your lifestyle. They put on these French cooking classes, but of course, the problem is their cooking isn't, it's not Japanese cooking, okay, so they're, they're way out of it, but they go at it with a great enthusiasm thinking that they're doing us a great favor. And, of course, there's a painting that I did of the French cooking class, and there are about fifty ladies from the, from the camp, all in their best finery. And you know, they had fur coats with, they had coats with fur collars, and the Sunday best sort of thing, coming to this cooking class, and I have the nun showing them how to make French, French desserts. I forgot what it was, maybe a cake or something. Well, of course, that was completely (wrong). We didn't have the supplies for it, for one thing, you didn't have, we wouldn't be wasting our money to get, and you only had so much butter that you can get at a time. You wouldn't use it for making a cake or French pastries. But they still went ahead with these things thinking that they were (...) really helping us. And they, every year we had to have a concert which they organized and everything, and we had to learn to do things like a French minuet, and the English maypole dances. All these sort of unusual, unusual type dancing routines that were, may have been okay in Quebec city, but out in New Denver, (...) our parents were completely mystified as to what was going on, but they, they appreciated the effort.

TI: But they thought that some of these things were impractical.

HS: Yeah, of course they were impractical, but they, they did it because they thought you have to be well-rounded. They have to get the kids, they even wanted us to learn to dance, because that's one of the things, the social graces was important for them. And we were, of course, completely dumbfounded, the fact that we had no idea how to dance or do anything, we were kids, we were fourteen- and fifteen-year-old kids at that time, and they thought... we wanted sports, and that was it. They did sports for us, but the main thing was they wanted the social reaction between male and female, which we were, at that point in our lives, we were not interested in because we were all amongst the boys, the girls amongst the girls. But they did it nevertheless. They did, they tried as much as possible to round you up as a citizen. In a way, they might have been thinking, "What'll happen to these guys if they ever go back into the Canadian society?" And one of the things you have to realize, in a camp, a lot of people that were there never thought of it. But again, you mentioned it again, you were in a group where all the same. No matter who you had been before, now you're in a camp, and you're all the same, and we're all of Japanese ancestry. It never occurred to them that we were Japanese ancestry. We did all the, the things like every average Canadian boy would have done, except we did everything outside. And everything you did was makeshift. I mean, we played baseball and things of that... just like you would in your camps. We did baseball, played hockey in the wintertime, we had never had the opportunity to play hockey when we were in Prince Rupert, there was no ice. Nobody had indoor ice at that time, it was too, too... it was something in the future. But now, we could go on the ponds that, in the wintertime in New Denver, and you'd play hockey, and so we learned to play hockey. We learned to play, well, we had baseball, they, and then skiing, we built our own skis to learn how to ski. So winter was a wonderful time there, because you had a lot of snow, and it really had the four seasons in New Denver. You had summer, all the, all the seasons were very distinct. So as far as kids are concerned, they did very well. And the, and the kind of activities that went on there, and the friends you made -- and it may be true even to this day, I know it's true to this day, that the friends you made in those days became the friends for a lifetime, because you were so close for four or five years, that we were all together as a community. And they had, the Japanese community never, I don't believe they had as many Bon Odoris, you know, the business of... and the interesting thing is many of the families, despite the fact you were limited how much luggage you could bring and whatnot, they all brought their kimonos and their Japanese things which they felt.

<End Segment 47> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.