<Begin Segment 33>

MK: But I had some friends. My, the close friends I had, they, when they found out this had happened, they were all close to me. We grew friends, but I think it took me until my tenth grade year to wake up. I was a, seven, from the seventh grade I was a F-minus kid. Tenth grade I was still the F-minus kid. I didn't care. I forged my father, my report cards, never showed it to my parents. My parents didn't know any better because they never knew the American style system of report cards or anything. I forged my father's signature on it, turned it in every month, every, every report card. Until a classmate of mine told me one day, says, "Let me see your report card." I said, "Why?" "I wanna see your report card." Showed him the report card. He said, "You not ashamed?" I said, "Why? Nobody cares about..." He said, "What you mean nobody cares about you?" This is my classmate. I said, "I come back, nobody cares about me, nobody associates with me," feeling sorry for myself. Said, "What difference does it make what I do with myself?" So he took me aside, started talking to me about what I got to do eventually when I grow up and this and that, and one day I think, "Well, I guess maybe he might have something that would help me," so the next day I went to the school and I talked to my, not my social studies teacher, my, I don't know what she taught. I think she taught chemistry or biology or something. Anyway, I went to her and I says, "You know what Ms. Yamamura, I want to go to college." She said, looked at me, says, "Masamizu, are you really serious?" I said, "Yeah, I think I goofed off enough. I think I played around long enough, and I better think about going, maybe going to college." She said, "Are you serious?" I say, "Yeah, I am serious. I want to go to college." So then she said, "I'll have a girl help you, tutor you," and the girl, she sent three girls. Every day I studied with them and was able to pass, graduate high school, extra.

TI: So you had to work extra hard to catch up.

MK: Yeah, catch up. Never learned English. I never learned the English, how to write English, but I learned how to do all my chemistry, the physics, the trig, all that other fundamental thing in order to pass.

TI: But this is something that you had to decide for yourself.

MK: I, yeah, I felt, quit being sorry for myself, right? That's all I was, being sorry for myself. Three years wasting my time away.

TI: Did any of your siblings have similar difficulties?

MK: No. I asked them. I asked them and they said no. It was just that I was in the wrong period of time where I'm just in the seventh grade years.

TI: It's interesting, it's almost like, to me, ironic because as you were leaving Tule Lake you were worried about the people who thought you weren't Japanese enough and kind of like, perhaps bullied a little bit, and then when you return to Kauai, you were bullied because you weren't American enough --

MK: American enough. [Laughs]

TI: It was like you were, you, you're...

MK: In between.

TI: In between.

MK: All my life, themes. But I think it made me a stronger person in my future.

<End Segment 33> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.