<Begin Segment 15>

TI: Let me, let me ask you a little bit about your mother, 'cause you mentioned how she was bilingual. How well did she fit in in the sense of most, probably most of the other women her age were Japanese, Issei. Did she kind of, was she, like, in two different worlds sometimes, you know, sometimes more Japanese and other times more American, or how did you see her at camp, especially with so many people?

SY: Well, I think it depends on the other person. If they spoke in Japanese, she spoke in Japanese. If they talked in English, she spoke in English. And I resented the fact that when I went to elementary school she became PTA president, and the reason for that is they had A, B, C, D classes, and the D class was the largest, and it seemed, it appeared that the A were the real bright students. And I was in the D class and I assumed that the D stood for "dumb class," because we had over sixty students, and those that were, during the winter I remember Mrs. Kassing telling us that she felt sorry for the kids that were near the stove, they were too hot, and those that were away from the stove, they were too cold. But because of the sixty students, we were actually clowns, I mean, we knew how to make spit wads and we knew how to shoot rubber bands and we would entice the girls, heckle them and do everything to make them miserable, miserable, and I felt sorry for the teacher. We made so many teachers cry because we were so unruly, where the A class had a smaller class and they were more involved with the education. But I didn't care because of the fact that I knew, what could they say with the president of the PTA, I was, she would bail me out, I hope, you know. [Laughs] So she was involved in that type, 'cause she didn't work, one of the few people that did not work, because she believed in making sure that I went straight.

TI: And, and what would a PTA president do in...

SY: I really don't know. All I know is that she met with the teachers once in a while, and... I don't know what her role was, all I know is she had that title.

TI: Well, do you recall, did they have PTA meetings?

SY: That I don't even know. But, because of her educational background, she just automatically became the president. But they had two different elementary school areas, and I went to one of them. She was only the PTA of the one I went to in Block 7.

TI: Okay. In my notes there was a game that you played, I'm not sure how frequently, where you would get a group and they would all hold hands...

SY: Yes, somebody come up with this ridiculous idea of getting electrocuted, or just getting a shock, and one person will, well, first of all, we all hold hands and we all rotate, because we knew that the person on the far, the last one, would get the biggest jolt. And then the one person will have one hand holding the other person and sticking this knife into the electrical socket, and it would jolt all of us, and, but the end person would get the biggest jolt. And, and I didn't like the idea, but it was the peer pressure that we had to do, but one summer, a guy named Omori, Tom Omori, said, "Hey, remember that game we played, let's all hold hands," and we all said, "No, I don't, we don't want to do that," but he stuck this knife in there. It turned out that he was holding the plastic area where it had a great big blast, and it turned the plastic or whatever all black, and it's a good thing because I think all eight or nine of us would have been dead, if we'd held hands and, and that was the last time we thought of playing that game.

TI: And so was he hurt when he did that?

SY: Well, he, he held the, fortunately, he held the place where, there was no electricity.

TI: Okay, but if he had been holding the, the metal part, holding hands...

SY: He was lucky.

TI: Yeah, and you were lucky that you weren't holding hands with him.

SY: Yeah, we just refused to do it.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.