<Begin Segment 18>

MN: So how would you compare the education you got at Poston to the education you were getting at Redlands?

RW: Well, how do you compare night and day, you know? I shouldn't say that, because there were some good teachers, okay? But man, there were some god awful teachers there. There was one that just seemed she wasn't all there, and so it was just kind of ridiculous the way the kids were. The girls were perfect angels in class, but the boys, it was chaos sometimes. I'll give you a couple examples. This one boy, I guess it's okay to name him 'cause we all knew who he was, this boy named Hiroshi Marui was always kind of talking Japanese stuff. I don't think he was really pro-Japanese; he was just a school kid messin' around. And he'd jump in class sometimes and, "Hey, Tennoheika, banzai, banzai," and the teacher would just get all rattled. And then one morning this teacher had her head down on her desk kind of resting, and this is like nine o'clock or something in the morning. So Hiroshi gets up and says, "Hey, Miss Powers, I know where you were last night. I saw you going to the MP camp." So this is the kind of person that was our teacher, and so she's half sleeping there, and so what are we gonna learn? We were in another class and there was a fire in the camp and John (Homer) Kinoshita, this friend of mine said as the fire truck went by. I'm gonna yell it's my house. Let's go." "Okay?" So he yells, "Hey, that's my house," and five of us just ran out. I mean, the teacher had no control what we did. We did whatever we wanted to do. Yet there were some good teachers. There was a Miss Moran who was our math teacher. She was really a nice controlling teacher that knew what she was doing, and she was trying to teach us something. So I guess as kids you just recognize which teacher, you show respect, which we did for her. Then the others you don't show any respect 'cause they didn't earn the respect so to speak.

MN: Now, were all your teachers hakujin?

RW: Mine were, but there were a few Nihonjin teachers, Japanese teachers, like this Tad Ochiai was a teacher, Ben Sanematsu. There were a few that were older guys that were teachers, and some women teachers. Not very many, but there were a few.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.