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TI: At the plantation were there some, like, communal type of buildings like you mentioned the people would have their own baths. Did they have like a communal bath or something?

YI: There's a communal bath, yeah, communal bath. And, you know, somebody that took care of the furo. And then each, they build the homes in blocks, you know, like a compound. And in the middle of the area, you know, they had the laundry room and the outhouse. So that, you know, all the laundry would be on one line, laundry, the outhouse and the... so I guess it's kind of communal living, yeah, when the laundry and the... eventually people started to build their own laundry, I mean... they were very generous, I think, if you can do things yourself then they'll give you the lumber to do it. And I think that's one way of keeping the employees in the plantation.

TI: And then they had other facilities, like you said, medical facility and the store and the post office.

YI: And then I think the other thing was that they built the Japanese schools in the community. So this is why I said Waipahu was big because we had two language schools, Japanese school. One we called the Sodo Shu Mission, the other one Hongwanji and they even built temples so the language school and the temple was together. So we had two Japanese language schools.

TI: And so did you also have a Buddhist minister?

YI: Yes.

TI: Were there Christian churches, did they have a Christian church?

YI: Yes, there were some few Christians. See, if you look at the makeup of a plantation community, the employees of the sugar plantation, and then because it's a pretty large community, we needed the supporting services. Which is merchants that you know, the plantation still did not have everything that the employees want and no cars, both parents worked. So what happens is that the merchants would come and take order, okay, in the evening and then deliver the next day. So there was a whole lot of... amazing, you know, I finally realized... Japanese, my parents, everybody spoke broken English, what they call pidgin English. It's all mixed up, you know, Japanese, Hawaiian, whatever it is, and the merchants that lived below the mill they used to call them "danburo" -- "down below." I guess when it finally dawned on me that, hey, that's English. [Laughs] And there was a whole... I think we had more than a dozen merchants, yeah.

TI: And what kind of things would the merchants sell? What would they take orders for?

YI: Mostly Japanese things, you know, like dried bonito, umeboshi.

TI: Okay, earlier you talked about the different groups, you know, Japanese, Filipino, Portuguese, was there quite a bit of mixing between, like, when you played as a boy, did you play around with Filipino, Portuguese?

YI: Yes, we all went to the same school. So in our generation we played.

TI: So tell me about the English school, was that in the plantation?

YI: No.

TI: So you had to --

YI: The English schools were out of the plantation. So they had, well, we had two schools, two English schools. One was called August Ahrens School and most of us went to August Ahrens until about fourth grade and then the one that was closer for me was Waipahu School, which was from fifth to eighth. And finally in those days, graduation for us was eighth grade. Eighth grade would be integrated, today's standard integrated. So most of my classmates, their last schooling was eighth grade and then they went to work. So they are about, what, fifteen or that, yeah? (Narr. note: I meant to say no classification as elementary (lower) or intermediate (middle), no kindergarten, just 1st to 8th.)

TI: And so after that, they didn't go to high school.

YI: Those where the parents could afford that, went to, came in town for intermediate. I guess in the '20s and the early '30s there was only McKinley High School and then Farrington High School and by then they built the first high school, again in Waipahu, which meant that students from Aiea, Pearl City, Ewa, all the way from Waianae came to Waipahu High School. So Waipahu High School was a real big high school.

TI: So was that there when you were there?

YI: Yeah, I was there two years, (1939-1940), and then I went Mid-Pacific (Institute), a boarding school.

TI: And so when you started it was a pretty new school, Waipahu?

YI: Yeah, pretty new school, in fact, if I had finished I would have been the second or third graduating class.

TI: Interesting, so it was a brand new school, so it was pretty nice, a brand new school.

YI: Oh yeah, real nice.

TI: Big school.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.