<Begin Segment 6>

TI: Going back now, thinking about school, tell me a little bit about your school and your classmates. Who were your classmates at school?

TK: We went to, we lived about a block and a half away from the grade school, and in that, in our school, it was a four room schoolhouse and I think, I don't know if there was kindergarten or not, I think it was first and second, third and fourth, fifth and sixth... maybe there was a kindergarten, because there was, because I remember in most of the rooms there were two grades and there was one teacher. What else you want to know about the school?

TI: So you mentioned you were in a south part where there weren't as many Japanese, so were there other Japanese classmates or were there mostly white classmates?

TK: There was quite a few Japanese classmates because they came from the, I don't, semi part of the, southern part of the island, and there must've been about a half a dozen or so Japanese classmates in our school.

TI: So half a dozen, but then the rest were, were...

TK: Were Caucasians, yeah.

TI: Okay. Now, growing up, did you have kind of like good friends in school that you would do things with, like maybe right after school or during recess you would play with?

TK: Yeah, we would play with them during recess, but after school I don't think we, I didn't anyway, have much contact with our Caucasian friends. One reason, I guess, is some of 'em lived further away and I was fairly young yet, but I think my older siblings had quite a bit of contact with their Caucasian friends.

TI: Now, on Bainbridge Island for elementary school, was there like a school bus that people had to take to, when they lived pretty far away from the school?

TK: Right.

TI: So they would take the bus home?

TK: They would take the bus home, right.

TI: Whereas you were close. You just walked.

TK: We walked, yeah.

TI: Now did, when you went home, did you have certain chores that you had to do as a kid?

TK: As a kid, yeah, I think. Because my parents were probably working most of the time, and then I think my sister had to do most of the cooking for dinner and I think my sister used to make us do some of the grunt work for her, get the dinner ready.

TI: So like chopping vegetables or washing things?

TK: Washing things or go in the garden to go and pick it and maybe stoke the fire and that kind of things.

TI: Because while she was, while the kids were making dinner, what were your parents doing?

TK: They were probably working the greenhouse or, or we used to have a garden outside and in the summer we used to grow vegetables out there, and we used to sell it at the local grocery store.

TI: Okay.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.