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TI: Let's talk about Bailey Gatzert. In particular, I'm curious, I hear in particular about the principal.

HL: Oh, Miss Mahon? She was a, she was a wonderful woman, very strict. Oh, and that was, that school, she ran it like a, like everybody marched down one side of the street, side of the hall and all that, but they had a very good educational system as far as I can see. Like the first, kindergarten through third, you were in self contained classrooms, but then starting with fourth grade you had a reading teacher, which took care of the library, and you had a teacher for the fourth and fifth grade, and then you had one for the sixth grade. And then you had an art teacher, you had a science teacher, you had a P.E. teacher, you had a music teacher, and you had a homeroom teacher, and you went from one to the other. And the thing that was great was you had the same music teacher from the time you were in fourth grade through sixth grade. And same with the science, and so you got a very good, solid continuity in all the subject matters, and it was a great school.

TI: That's unusual for elementary school. Usually you always hear your fourth grade teacher and she taught everything, your fifth grade teacher taught everything. This is almost like junior high school or high school.

HL: It was, we called the platoon system, and we, the class moved from one teacher to the other. But it was a great... because I'll tell you one that happened to me was, I'm not very musical at all. I can't carry a tune. I can't, I'm tone deaf practically, but when I went to college one of the things that the, at the college I went to, they gave you a test in music, and I passed it with, like a ninety-five, and so the head of department calls me and says, "I think you should be in the music department." I said oh no, no, no, I don't belong in the music department. I said, "I'm tone deaf." He wouldn't believe me, and I said, "Well, you can test me," and he did. He says, "Where did you learn all this?" I said I learned it all in my elementary school. I said by the time we were in sixth grade we were composing simple tunes. I said we knew all the, we could identify the instruments in the orchestra, we could read music, I mean, it was just fantastic. The same thing with science, like so often in science I've watched over the period, over the time, you go over the same thing over and over every year but with one science. We had astronomy in fourth grade, geology in fifth grade, and it was, we had a wonderful, wonderful elementary education.

TI: It's funny, you're the first one who's really explained this. I didn't realize it was platooned like that at, at Bailey Gatzert.

HL: Oh yeah, it was wonderful.

TI: Now, were the other elementary schools in Seattle doing anything like this?

HL: I don't know.

TI: 'Cause I've never heard this. This is, this is the first time I've heard this.

HL: Yeah, well that's the way.

TI: And you're right, because the science teacher, he would, he knew what you guys learned in fourth grade and so it was like this continuum.

HL: Continue on and, it was a continuum. And the same thing with music, same thing with art.

TI: I suppose that works when your student body is pretty stable and that they, they're there from first through sixth grade. I mean, I think it follows through because if you're plopped into that... well, I guess it still works.

HL: No, it wouldn't, it wouldn't be any different from being plopped in any other school, but I think, as far as I'm concerned, that was the best elementary school system that I have come across.

TI: What did the school do in terms of kids coming in kindergarten or first grade speaking mostly Japanese?

HL: Well, all of us were like that.

TI: So what did they do to, to integrate you or to assist you?

HL: We were all that way. [Laughs] But the thing is in the classroom we were expected to speak English. Out on the playground it was half English, half in Japanese, and then as you went along you'd learn more and more English, spoke more and more English. But I didn't speak English actually until I went to school. I spoke half English, half Japanese. Half the time I don't think I knew which language I was speaking in. [Laughs]

TI: Interesting. Yeah, you hear a lot about Bailey Gatzert, how for so many Niseis in Seattle, most of 'em went through Bailey Gatzert, so it's kind of a shared experience.

HL: Yeah. And then one of the things that used to happen that was great was that when it snowed, Miss Mahon would always take different classes, you'd have certain, and then she'd take 'em out on the hillside. We'd take trays from the cafeteria and we'd slide down that hill. Oh, that was the greatest thing.

TI: This is the hill down towards Dearborn, going down that big hill?

HL: You know that side hill.

TI: Right. [Laughs] Yeah, they couldn't get away with that now, the liability.

HL: No, no. And the thing that was interesting is I ran across this fellow, Chinese fellow, in fact, in Berkeley and somehow we got to talking about where you went to school and all that in Seattle, and he says, "I went to Bailey Gatzert," and I said I did too. And he said, "Do you remember when Miss Mahon would let us ride down the, slide down that hill when it was snowing?" I said yeah, I remember that. So there's shared experience. [Laughs]

TI: That's, that's good. You know, I'm jumping around a little bit, but later on you became an educator, and when you think back to Bailey Gatzert, and you mentioned you thought that platooning was useful, what other things do you take away from Bailey Gatzert in terms of, that was good or bad in terms of education?

HL: Well, it was a very structured school, and so everybody knew exactly what was expected and what, and that you did things a certain way, and I think for kids lots of times that's a good, good feeling for them to, you feel secure that you're doing the right thing 'cause this is the way it's done and this, and everybody does it this way. You always went down the right side of the hall, you never went down the left side kind of thing. [Laughs] And then another thing that was interesting, I think, in that school was you didn't just, when the bell rang you just didn't go out the door. You went by class by class and you just marched yourself out the front door, or the side door, whichever door you were assigned. And then most of us, of course, went to Japanese language school right after that, so we just went down the hill to the Japanese language school.

TI: Yeah, I want to ask about Japanese language school, but before that, how did Miss Mahon get along with the parents, the Issei parents?

HL: Very good. The Issei parents thought the world of her.

TI: And why was that?

HL: Because I think they felt that she was very interested in their kids, and then, and she didn't, she went to bat for them, for the parents when they needed to, and she was, she took care of the kids that were in her school and she didn't let them get away with anything. The parents knew that their kids were behaving at school.

TI: Okay, good.

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