<Begin Segment 17>

BK: As you think about your life now, you're about sixteen, seventeen at that, at this time, what was the social life like? What did students, what did children your age do?

MH: I know we went to school and we went on picnic tables. Mother always said that I don't learn too much, because I was too busy playing. And we had dances, that's about all we could do or... in the summertime, we'd go down to the canal, go swimming. I didn't swim very well, so I usually just went down and dangled my feet. But... and then a girlfriend in the block was at the dry cleaners. So I'd go down and visit with her, and learn how to run the dry cleaning. I mean, it was all, just in and out type of thing, so I did that for a little while. And as I say, Mother said, "Nane mo naraun kara."

BK: Which means?

MH: I didn't learn anything.

BK: That you didn't learn. [Laughs]

MH: And she didn't approve of -- we didn't learn manners... you go to dinner, and you never sat with your parents, you always went with somebody else that was... and so she thought that, when I was out of my freshman year, that I should -- my sister had relocated already to Pocatello. She ran the hostel there, where people that came in and out to go to work in the fields.

BK: The people who left camp to temporarily work in the fields?

MH: Uh-huh.

BK: I see, so she ran the hostel for those people.

MH: Uh-huh. So Mother said, "Don't you think that it'd be a good idea for you to go and get a job, and go to school?" So, that's what I did. I left and went to school my sophomore year. So, I graduated from Pocatello. I did housework. I went to one family and they had a ten-year-old girl that was taller than I was. And she just... I finally quit, I couldn't take it. So I just, "I'm quitting," and walked out. [Laughs] But my sister's friend, Mrs. Hanaki, she kind of lived in town and had two children. And she took in a lot of girls, even from the farms, that wanted to live in town. She always had room for them, and they kind of helped her, and got room and board. They owned a photo studio. So, when I was out of work, I didn't go to my sister, because she was busy, so I would stay with Ida and then I found another job with a lawyer and I stayed with them all the time.

BK: I'd love to come back to that, but if I can just leave Pocatello, just for a minute, so we could kind of go back to Minidoka again, because I know that you have some wonderful things about Pocatello to share with us. But back in Minidoka, I'm just wondering, you were there for about, what, two years or so, it was...

MH: No, I was only there about a year.

BK: Oh, just about a year?

MH: Yeah, a little over a year, I think.

BK: Oh, okay.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.