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TI: So let's, let's talk about that, Japanese school. So you attended the Hollywood Gakuen?

TH: Yes.

TI: And tell me a little bit about the school. How large was it? How many students were there?

TH: Well, thinking back, it must've been over a hundred students, and it might've been as much as a hundred and fifty students. And the school building that they put up had... well, they designed it so that (...) the partitions removed, you have a very large auditorium, but with the partitions in you had fairly large three rooms to split up as classes. And in the classes, thinking back now, probably twenty, twenty-five, maybe thirty, thirty of us in each class, and I had suspected maybe something like six classes. But then I (...) went to the daily school, and that was after regular school that we attended the Japanese language school, and that was from Monday through Friday. And then they also had an all-day Saturday session where the other students went.

TI: And so how was it determined who went to the daily and who went to the Saturday?

TH: That I don't know. They had a bus, too, so that might be that they were the more extended children, maybe even outside of the, what we call the Virgil district now.

TI: So perhaps where they lived, there wasn't a convenient, maybe, gakuen or Japanese school.

TH: (Yes), and so on Saturday the bus probably went around and picked 'em up and they spent the whole day.

TI: And so... Japanese school, tell me about it. I mean, did, was that something that you looked forward to?

TH: Oh, I think most of the kids didn't because we missed out on playing after school activities, but (...) you followed what your parents would more or less like you to do, so we attended the school, reluctantly. But for me, what happened was as we got up into, say, the 1940, probably 1940, I decided well, it'd be kind of nice to really know the Japanese language. And so then I felt that if I learned enough to read the Japanese newspaper, like the Rafu Shimpo, but unfortunately as, as I began to get really interested, December 7th came along and that was that for my Japanese education.

TI: Was there something in particular that, that made you want to, to really learn Japanese? Do you remember a person or an event that said, oh, and that, that prompted you?

TH: No, I really don't remember what suddenly tripped... I said, oh, it would be kind of nice to know the Japanese language.

TI: So I'm curious, is that something you've done with other things, where you kind of think about something and you say, "Oh, this is something I want to do," and you just do it? Is that something that...

TH: I think, basically, that was... yeah. Or maybe the opportunity is there and I look at it, says okay, yeah.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.