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SI: So this was what my childhood was like. We were barefoot all summer. Then when we went to school, we went to one room schoolhouses where we had from first to eighth grade in one school, one teacher. First grade, second grade, third grade, maybe fourth grade were no students, fifth, so forth. The schools had maybe twenty or less than twenty-five students. We learned very little because about the only thing we did together was do pledge of allegiance to the flag first thing in the morning. We all got up and did this and then we'd have English, mathematics, spelling, and so forth, none of which I learned very much. We were so unsuccessful that we moved. I went to four or five different grammar schools in the eight years, and I went to a couple of one-room schoolhouses. And then we moved to a small town of Isleton in third grade so my first grade one school, second grade another. And then third grade the schools were in Sacramento County segregated so that the Asians -- of which there were virtually all Japanese -- and the Caucasians in adjacent school separated with barbed wire. But the students had been there in this little town, and they were in individual classes, so they were so far ahead of me that I really didn't know what was going on in class. But I struggled through. And at the end of the year the teacher thought I should take the year over again because I really had not gotten everything I should have out of the class. But my mother was very aggressive and very persistent and she... as I look back I try to pattern my life more after her because she is always optimistic, she's always energetic, and she's always willing to do anything for anybody at any time. And she came to school, speaking very poor English, not being able to write it at all, but talking to the teacher, and she bribed the teacher with silk stockings and chocolates saying that, "My son should not be left back in this class again. He should continue on." They let me through and I managed to keep in class every year so I got out at my normal age. I think I was, before I turned seventeen, out of high school.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.