<Begin Segment 4>

SY: And you, and so by the time you started school you, I assume -- so what was the elementary school you went to?

HS: It was called Washington Grammar School, which is, I mean, it wasn't too far away, about eight blocks away, so we used to walk every morning, up until the sixth grade.

SY: And all, no other Japanese were in this school?

HS: I think there was only a couple of kids in my class, Japanese. It was predominantly Caucasians.

SY: And there was no Japanese school nearby, so you never went to Japanese school?

HS: The only gakuen was up on Dewy and Olympic.

SY: That was Uptown area.

HS: Yeah, that was Uptown area.

SY: So your parents never...

HS: Well, my dad asked me, I was twelve years old and then he asked me if I wanted to go to Japanese school, but I didn't want to go because I'm left handed and teachers just go, bam [smacks hand], they say, "Use this hand," take a ruler and slap it. I said, "I'm not gonna let any teacher do that." I says, "I'd punch him back." [Laughs] But my kid brother was eight years old, and so he said, "Okay, I'll go." Dad says, "I'll give you a nickel every time you go to Saturday school." So he says, after a while he says, "Dad, you don't have to give me a nickel anymore." He says, "I like it." But it did, it's a good thing he did go because he became an optometrist and a lot of his clientele was Isseis. All the Issei friends come from downtown when they heard that he became an optometrist. I mean, that's how close all of our Kagoshima families were.

SY: So, but the Japanese school was really mostly people from the Uptown area then?

HS: Yeah.

SY: So you didn't really befriend any of those people when you were really little.

HS: No. It was only 'til I got to junior high school when I started making all the friends that lived around there. Then half of the bunch went to Poly High School, which was on Washington and Figueroa. And then my brother, his best friend lived on Pico and Normandy -- they had a nursery there -- and they were together from grammar school to junior high school, so he went to, he was out of the L.A. High School district, but he wanted to go to L.A. High School, so my brother got a permit and then he went to L.A. High School. So I just followed him. I figured he went to L.A. High. But in a way, as I grew up later, I think, I still have pretty good grades and everything, but I'm more manual-minded. I used to tinker with things, take clocks and stuff apart just to see what makes 'em tick. And Poly was more of a manual arts type of school, and that's what I did all my life, is putter around with things, take things apart and learn new carpentry and a little electricity, plumbing and all. In later life, I did everything do it yourself.

SY: And L.A. High was known more as a...

HS: It was predominantly Jewish in those days, and so I learned that when I was, it was about, Jewish... Los Angeles High School and Fairfax High School were predominantly Jewish schools. Most of the, it was three thousand schools in L.A. High School, thirty-two hundred, and I think about, at least forty percent of 'em were probably Jewish, so on high holidays we didn't study. You couldn't do much in classes with at least forty percent of the class not being there, so it was more or less just a, like a study thing. [Laughs]

SY: So do you remember feeling a little different because you were Japanese?

HS: No, I never felt discrimination. Nobody ever called me a Jap when I was growing up. We lived in our own community, and my schoolmates, most of 'em were hakujin.

SY: And did you have close friends that were Jewish, or did you mainly stay to yourself, your family?

HS: L.A. High School, we didn't make really close friends. The only, at lunch time most all of the Niseis would have lunch and eat on the front lawn, and they would all just gather there and talk and kid around. Before the war, it seemed like all the Niseis used to just clutter together, and we didn't really mix that much with the hakujin, other students. It seemed like this, even to this day, I mean, the Niseis kind of all congregate together.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.