<Begin Segment 14>

TI: And so when the tour was finished and it was actually time for the tour to go back, you decided to stay in Japan longer.

KK: Yeah.

TI: Why did you decide to stay there longer?

KK: Well, you know Ms. Kawai, Michi Kawai, she was a YWCA secretary. And she had been to Bryn Mawr for education, and she realized that the Japanese women were not educated. All they did was go to grammar school and learn the alphabet. And she came back and told the ministry that, "The girls here would fall short of any kind of comparison to the foreign girls." So she got permission to start a school. And so she did; she started in her own home with three students. The first year, second year, it doubled, and by the tenth year, she had quite a school going there. So she, she also noted that when the Nisei went to Japan, they were at a loss because they didn't know how to react to anything and they had been taught in tea ceremony and flower arrangement, but nothing much else that would help them to navigate in Japan. So Michi Kawai decided that she would have a class for chugakusei. So she started a class, and at the time that I went, she already had forty or fifty girls in that chugakusei. Anyway, they were mostly high school graduates, girls that had graduated high school in California and then they went over there. That's all that they learned. 'Cause there was no paths or anything for them, so she, she formed this group. And also, the schools at that time, in order for the Japanese children to learn good English and pronunciation, that the Japanese teachers just couldn't handle. So she always had a Caucasian person. So then just that time, she hired Helen Barnes, who was a missionary in Japan, and she was hired to come. And Kawai Sensei had a small bungalow separate from the rest of the places, so that this foreign teacher could live the way she lived, rather than have to cope with sitting Japanese-style and everything. She also was a student of sorts. She wanted to learn Japanese ways and everything.

TI: This is Michi Kawai wanted to? Who wanted to learn Japanese ways?

KK: The haole teacher.

TI: The haole teacher, okay.

KK: Ms. Barnes.

TI: And what was your role in the school? What did you do?

KK: I taught foreign sewing. The sewing classes in Japan only taught sewing a kimono.

TI: Okay. So let me make sure I understand this. So this school, these forty to fifty students were Japanese girls. But Michi Kawai hired, sort of, some Niseis and these other haole teachers to teach the Japanese students? And then for the Niseis it was a chance to also learn more Japanese culture also, to spend more time in Japan. So it kind of went both ways, is that how it worked?

KK: Yeah, a little bit, yeah. But then that forty to fifty students was just the very beginning of the school. By the time I was going there, they already had built another addition, two-story addition to the first bungalow that they had been using. So, you know, she had a goodly number by then. I never knew exactly how many students there were when I was there. But it was a good-sized school by then.

TI: And did you enjoy teaching sewing to the school?

KK: Yeah, I thought it was fun. And it was, it was interesting to interact with these girls. At that time, the working girls were just being introduced to foreign clothes. They didn't want to use those long sleeves and the tight body and all that sort of thing. They figured they couldn't do all the things that a regular secretary should do. So everybody, every company was promoting the foreign clothes, they call it yousai, sewing the foreign clothes. You know, you've heard of youfuku? Well, that means foreign clothes. So that what I was teaching was yousai. So when I went there, this girl who was there before, had gone from L.A. to this school two years ahead of me. But she had only gone to industrial school, so she had only the industrial type sewing. So that I don't know just how far she went, but she did the best she could. She was a friend of mine from church. So when they heard that I was coming -- and she was tired of staying in Japan by that time -- she wanted to leave. So she told me about this, so I went to see Ms. Kawai to see if I could succeed her in that position. So that's what happened. It's just lucky to have that opening.

TI: Yeah. It sounds like a really interesting experience that you had.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.