<Begin Segment 23>

BK: Well, Mary, you were talking about Pocatello, and the kinds of fun things that you did, and it sounds like you were really hanging out, or palling around with Japanese Americans at that time.

MH: Well, not so much palling around, because I don't know, in any place you go to, most of the girls don't like new girls. It's just, you go with them if you have to, like the girls that were in my class, of course. If they had a function that the class would go to, we went together. But on the whole, I think, you have -- like there was only two Japanese girls that lived in town. One mother had a fish market and the other girl's father had a barbershop. And we used to, kind of... if I wanted to go someplace with somebody, we would go to a movie, or if I didn't have a date to go someplace. But actually, I don't think, no matter where you go, it's hard for a girl, much harder for a girl to be accepted than it is for a boy. Because even now, my sis-, at that time, and then they called us 'evacuees,' it didn't help. [Laughs] So, you always felt like a misfit. And I think to this day, I kind of had that feeling that I just don't quite fit.

BK: Kind of like an outsider.

MH: Yeah.

BK: Uh-huh. At that time, did you have much to do with the Caucasian kids in the school? 'Cause you said you had a class of what, 350? I mean, it was a very large class.

MH: No, there was two girls that lived, I don't know, I'd meet them on the way to school, two hakujin sisters, and we'd walk to school and walk home together, because I didn't, wasn't able to stay at school, and because I had to get home to go to work. So, I would walk with them in the morning, and come back with them. Drop them off where they were going, because one of the girls worked also, in a Chinese restaurant, after school. Because we were already juniors, seniors, so I would drop her off, and then just walk on the rest of the way home. Other than that, except if Ida's brother was in town, then he would pick me up, and we'd do something before I had to go home.

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.