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MN: And you attended Lincoln Grammar School, Grant Junior High School, and Reedley High School.

LW: Yes.

MN: Now, your Lincoln, is it grammar school, elementary school? Grammar school, that, is that correct?

LW: Yes.

MN: What was the ethnic makeup of that school?

LW: There were primarily, I think we, I had in most of my classes about four, four or five classmates, so that was about all the way from grammar school right on through high school. In high school I think I had quite a few more, maybe six or seven classmates in my classes.

MN: Who were Japanese Americans?

LW: Yes, they were Japanese Americans.

MN: And were the others all Caucasians?

LW: Most of the others were Caucasian. So we were, then there was also quite an influx in Reedley area of Armenians, so our neighbors, we had quite a good number of people whose ethnic heritage is of Armenia. So they were a smaller, small group of, a small community along with the Japanese.

MN: And which Japanese language school did you attend?

LW: We had what we called a Japanese Saturday school, 'cause all day Saturday almost all the Japanese American children went to Japanese school.

MN: Was there an official name for this school?

LW: I think they only, they called it Reedley Japanese School. Us kids called it Saturday school, and that meant that rather than enjoying a free Saturday like our classmates were, our Caucasian classmates were, we had to go to language school, so we didn't have a very good attitude about Japanese language, going to school on Saturday.

MN: Now where did the teachers come from for the Saturday school?

LW: As I remember, all the teachers came from Fresno, California. That, that was the city which most of us farm families related to. Going to the city for us farm families was going to Fresno, and the population of Japanese was much larger in proportion.

MN: Now, compared to your everyday at the five day regular school, how strict was the Japanese school?

LW: As I remember, they weren't particularly strict. They wanted to make sure that we, we did our homework and did our work in school, but as I remember they, they weren't that strict. They made sure that we behaved ourselves in class, but most of us Japanese immigrant kids were pretty well behaved according to our Caucasian friends.

MN: When you went to Japanese school what kind of lunch did you bring?

LW: Yeah, I think my mother always fixed us Japanese food. We had musubi and okazu to go with our, our lunch, and which was, which was nice because our, the public school was always sandwiches and the usual thing that Caucasian families had for lunch.

MN: So when you went to your regular school you brought sandwiches, but on Saturdays you got to bring rice?

LW: Yes.

MN: Now, some of the Japanese schools, during the summer break they asked students to write diaries. Did you have to do that?

LW: No, I don't remember writing, ever writing a diary.

MN: And at home which language was spoken?

LW: My dad was bilingual, so we, we spoke English to him, but my mother spoke only Japanese, so we always talked, well, my mother would talk to us in Japanese and for the most part we would respond in English. So English was our language. My mom's language was Japanese and my dad's language was bilingual, so we spoke both, we heard both the Japanese and English.

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