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TI: And so before we go there, I want to actually come back to, when you were, again, before the war, what was school like for you? Like just going through junior high school, high school, I mean, how would people describe you as a student?

MY: Not very good. [Laughs] I don't know, I never was a good student, and I hated to go to school. And like Japanese school, I hated it all the more because in the summertime, they'd have Japanese school for three hours a day. But I had to stay home and watch the kids and cook, so I couldn't go. So I missed out on all those six or seven years of Japanese school.

TI: And regular school you didn't like either, you said?

MY: No, so I was never a very good student.

TI: You told me this cute little story that one of your classmates back in Thomas was Gordon Hirabayashi. And that because they oftentimes had you sit in alphabetical order, that you would, with Iseri and Gordon was Hirabayashi, you would sit right behind him sometimes. So do you remember Gordon?

MY: Oh, yeah, yeah. Because, well, you know, we started school together, and then when he was in about the third or fourth grade, he skipped a grade. At the same time George was, my brother George skipped a grade, too. So this is, you know, how many years later, he came to one of these things, and my daughter was there, so I said, "This is my daughter." And he said, "Oh," he says, "I gotta tell you, your mom was so mean." And I said, "Oh, come on, Gordon, that's a bunch of crap," and we'd laugh about it. But yeah, there was things like that that come up once in a while.

TI: So why did Gordon think that you were mean? What did he say?

MY: Oh, that's what he said, he said, "She was mean. She'd stick me with, hit me with a pencil or poke me with a pencil." And I don't recall that at all. [Laughs] It could have happened. Yeah, my mom heard it, she'd say, "Oh, that sounds like you."

TI: That's funny.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright (c) 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.