<Begin Segment 9>

MN: Now I'm going to ask you about your school. I know you went to George Washington grammar school. Can you tell us what the ethnic makeup of the Washington grammar school was like?

KI: At that time my sister and I were the only Japanese. All I remember is one other girl that was Filipino and I think there was one black girl I think it was but the rest was all white.

MN: How did you feel as you were a real minority there? How did you feel about that?

KI: I didn't feel anything. I was just accepted from day one from kindergarten and we just went through all the way through sixth grade together.

MN: Did you ever feel embarrassed that your parents were not like your hakujin friend parents?

KI: If I did I don't remember. I think maybe in a way, yes, because they couldn't speak English enough. But my mother used to, like when I was in kindergarten she used to walk me to school so I guess she mingled with the parents there. But I guess in those days they didn't have... I know they had PTAs but I wonder if they had the parent and teachers meetings like they do nowadays. I don't know. They might have. Maybe that why the association was started.

MN: Now during school you're with your hakujin friends, what opportunities did you have to mingle with the Japanese American community?

KI: I guess mainly church would be on Sunday, and then I did have a few friends that were living fairly close to University and where I lived, so we would go to each other's house and play games or play jacks or go to the library or something like that. So, yeah I would have to say, yes, I did have some Japanese friends that I associated with during the off school time like on the weekends. And maybe sometimes even during the week, but I would say mainly on the weekends.

MN: And then you were sharing with us earlier how you would go to your hakujin friend homes and since your house was farthest away, they didn't come to your house too much.

KI: Yeah, and I had forgotten all about this but I think it was last year, two years ago, I found a classmate of mine that was in the sixth grade with me and she said she had been looking for me for fifteen, sixteen years. And she went through, you know, through the internet and everything trying to find me and she said she finally found this thing with my brother's name on it. And she says, "I remember you had a brother about that age," that this thing said on the computer so she got the address and wrote to him but he never answered her and he never told me about it. Until finally I saw it on the computer, on the internet, so I got connected to her. And then she said to me, she said, "I saw you when you came back from the war in high school," and she says, "I wanted to renew our friendship," but she says, "I chose to be friends with my friends who were in the sorority because I was in the sorority with them." And she says it haunted her all these years that she never renewed her friendship with me. And the reason she said she was looking for me is that she came from a divorced family, and when she came to Washington school I was the first one that befriended her. And she says she would never forget, she would never forget me, and little girl with bangs. And she said I used to take her to my house because her mother was a waitress and she would be working and she would walk home to an empty apartment, so she would come over to my house. And she says, "I remember your mother being so warm and offering me food," and it was just really nice to come to my house. And she said, "You even taught me how to play the piano." And I says, "I don't remember that," but things that you don't remember the other person does and we finally met, we finally met, she lives down in Pacific Grove and she's still the same girl that I remembered. And the funny thing was I think two years before that or a year before that, our nursing class had our fiftieth anniversary down at Big Sur which is just outside of where she lives. We could've walked out the back gate of the... what's the name of the place that we went to... it's a conference ground down in Monterey.

MN: Asilomar?

KI: Asilomar, yeah. And so if you come out the back gate of Asilomar, her street is right the next one. And she was living there all that time and I didn't know it and I could've visited her. And so it was really strange, but oh we had such a good time when we finally my son went and he took me down there to meet her and we rehashed old times. So I remembered her and she remembered me and it took all this time to get our stories together. It was really something, so I have these little stories about hakujin friends. But some of the ones I was really disappointed, you get disappointed even as a young kid that certain people have not acknowledged you and stuff like that. 'Cause you grow up with them for all these years, six years of concentrated school and doing things together day in and day out, holidays, birthdays, we always went to each other's birthdays and so it kind of hurt but I think I just let go of it. But when you talk about it, when I think about it, yeah I guess I was hurt. But then we just went down and celebrated Ramona's eightieth birthday, it was a surprise and I guess she talked to her children so much about me that they got my address and everything and said, "You've got to come to her birthday party." So I went to her and she was really surprised to see me there. So that's a real nice story that I like to remember.

MN: After all these years.

KI: Yeah, gee.

MN: So actually it's through the internet that you were able to reconnect.

KI: Yeah.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.