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MA: What are some types of things that you would make and play with?

MH: I sewed a lot. My mother showed me how to embroidery, crochet, and that sort of thing was my pastime. And of course, jacks, played jacks, marbles was pretty much in our time. And then we had buttermilk. And the top was, it's cardboard paper stuff that had a cover on. Because of half of the upper part was cream, and the, you had to shake it to make your whole milk. But if you wanted to save the cream, you took the cream out first and left what portion of the cream to mix it with the milk. So it wasn't like half and half or anything, it was pretty much enough cream in there to have the milk taste good. So what we, we saved those little caps. And we, you know, we, I don't know what we call them now a days. We called them slaps, and all you do, you hit it and try to catch all the ones on top, and that's all yours. And if you miss it, you know, you take turns. That was basically the playing things. I didn't play baseball. But I did like to do cartwheels and acrobat, those kind of things. But my mother always said it's not ladylike to do that, you know. So I had to kind of do away with that. Played a lot of jacks, and hopscotch, jump roping and that sort of thing, when I was very young. But as we got older, we had, of course, a gym, we had, we called gym, P.E., whatever we call it these days. We used to call it P.E. But they call it... well, anyway, that was baseball. we had to have baseball, and we had to have basketball. But I took tennis, as a side, 'cause I like tennis. So I took that for maybe the last year of high school.

MA: What are some other classes that you enjoyed in high school? Some of your favorite classes?

MH: Oh, we had, they had modern dancing, which I wasn't interested in that. And so, basically, not a whole lot of things for me. We just liked to get together. These Japanese kids, we were, there was so many of us, and so, we just kind of stuck around with our own little group. And if somebody invites us to sort of join something, we would go along. But we pretty much stayed to ourselves, the Japanese people and the Chinese people and the Spanish people, they all had their little cliques. But we got along, we didn't have much problem. And then the black kids didn't have a lot of problem, like they do now. They, they got along real well. And in those days, we didn't call them black. That was very bad to say, "black," they were called "Negroes." But then, now, they don't like to be called that, they rather be called blacks. So there's a lot of changes and then the Spanish people, they don't call 'em Mexican or Spanish, they're Latinos or Chicanos, or whatever they call 'em now. Whatever group you were into, they're called that way. So, there's a lot of changes of what we used to say, and what they say now.

MA: Uh-huh, a lot of changes.

MH: About the different races. Uh-huh.

MA: So your father opened the shoe repair. And he was self-employed, again. Who were his customers at that time? I know you lived near a baseball field. Was there ever...

MH: Well, I, mostly Caucasian people because shoes, they kept their own shoes pretty much. They didn't buy a lot of new shoes because people couldn't afford it in those days. It was pretty rough years. The Depression started pretty much when I was... about 1927, '8, '9, somewhere in that. And things, everybody was poor. You were lucky to have food on your table, you know. We had people come around in the neighborhood, going into the garbage. We had this grocery so all the ends of veggies that we throw away, you know, they would gladly pick them up and use 'em and clean 'em, whatever they can use, they took it. So it was very difficult to live in those days. We were lucky because my mother made all our, my clothes. We never hardly went out to buy clothes, except for the boys they did, but, but my mother sewed a lot. So I had homemade clothes a lot. Until I started school, and then I learned to, I took home ec, and so that was a best way to get around to learn how to cook and sew a lot more. And then being, I wasn't very brilliant in my school years anyways. So my parents says, "You're gonna be a wife and mother sooner or later in your later life. You might as well learn this and start young." And so I believe that was what they had in mind. So I did, and I did go to Pacific Sewing School, I was gonna be a seamstress. And I had everything planned.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.