<Begin Segment 11>

TI: So let's, let's switch gears a little bit, talk about school now.

HU: Okay.

TI: So tell me about school. What was that like?

HU: Well, country school, country grammar school one, first grade through eighth grade, we had three classrooms and three teachers. First, second and third was handled by a young lady teacher named Miss Bolton (...) and then there was another classroom for fourth, fifth, and sixth grader and that was Miss Milner, and there was seventh and eighth, which was the principal's, Mr. Henderson's. So we had three classrooms and three teachers (...). It's the kind of classroom that you see in old Western movies, like "House on the Prairie" or something, the classroom with bunch of all these different grades in one classroom.

TI: And so when you went to school, what would you typically wear when you went to school?

HU: Let's see, regular shirt like that, jeans, and work shoes or oxfords, regular, regular clothing.

TI: And who would your classmates be?

HU: That's interesting because that was, this was Japanese, predominately Japanese community, so there were twelve students in our, in my grade, and out of that five, let's see, five were Niseis. Five, six, seven, eight -- no, five, five were Niseis, four were already Sanseis, 'cause it's a, this was an older community. Four were Sanseis and three were Caucasian.

TI: Now, I'm curious. When you knew which ones were Nisei, which ones were Sansei, was there a difference between Nisei and Sansei? Did you --

HU: No, actually no difference at all, except they were smarter. I wouldn't say smarter, but they were... well, like for example, we used to give, we had to give a talk in front of the class and there was one Sansei girl that says governor of California is Mr. Warren, Governor Warren. I said oh, wow. To me that was just foreign, that kind of thing, I'd never heard of that kind of thing, so I guess the Sanseis were a little more advanced in, because of the Nisei parents, they would, they'd be talking about politics or whatever. But otherwise there's no difference at all.

TI: In some ways you were almost a mixture because your mother is Issei, but your, your older brother who kind of raised you was Nisei, so you probably got a, a flavor of both.

HU: Yeah. Yeah.

TI: And so when you think of, so there are nine Japanese Americans and three Caucasians, how, how would your classmates describe you as a student?

HU: Not too smart, kinda stupid. [Laughs]

TI: So how, if, were you kind of someone who spoke out a lot in class or...

HU: I would just, I wasn't that talkative. When I was, I was, when I was first, second grade I was very talkative. I guess I quieted down. I would, I would say average, not too talkative.

TI: Now, why do you think you quieted, because now you're very talkative, so it's almost like naturally, I sense that you're a very talkative person. Why, why do you think you quieted down?

HU: I, that, I've been trying to analyze that over and over for last fifty years or so. I really don't know why. I guess, well, it may have happened -- this is just a suspicion -- that it may have happened in 1938 when my sisters came back. And my sister, Miharu, Yoshimi, they came from Japan and Miharu-san was sort of, I wouldn't say bossy, but sometimes she would ridicule me. When I say something or do something she would kind of get after me. That may have been one of the problems. I really don't know.

TI: Interesting.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.