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TI: Can you tell us a little bit more about your experience in school? So you went to...

DI: We went to the Mountain View Highway elementary school, and that's where I met all the other Japanese families. I knew the ones who were part of the Mie Kenjinkai group, because we used to have the kenjinkai picnics, and that's where I met the other children. I was too shy to run and get prizes, I was too shy to really socialize with them, but I knew them by sight. And they're all the people who came from Japan from the Mie-ken side. And then I would see them at school, and some of them will be in my class. But socially I was very backward, now that I think about it. Because I never had to socialize. I just grew up with my brothers, I climbed trees, I played out in the field, I just did boy-type things growing up. So having girls as friends was so strange to me. It was difficult for me; it was really difficult. Socially I was very shy. If I saw someone coming towards me coming home from school down Castro Street, the main street of Mountain View, my mother said she'd watch me, I'd walk to the other side of the street and come home. Or else I'll go to the library after school and I'll check out two books and I'll read the books coming home. I just didn't socialize. To me that was perfectly normal because that's what I was happy doing. I loved to read, I still love to read.

TI: Did it make any difference whether they were Japanese or not in terms of socializing? Did it make any difference between whether they were Japanese or not Japanese, how you felt about socializing?

DI: Well, they were just classmates. I was just socially shy with anybody. I think one of the main reasons was because when I started school I could not converse in English. I just spoke Japanese at home, being the eldest. And when I started to learn, I think I became very comfortable probably by the fourth grade. It took me a long time. Because I didn't communicate with other children, I didn't have a chance to use it, and therefore it took me around four years. By the fifth grade I was very comfortable speaking English. And I loved to help the teacher and so they would help me do work before class began. They'd have me do artwork, they'd have me do extra things in class that helped me out that way, because they knew I just didn't know what to do in a social situation, I guess. [Laughs] So it was difficult for me to play during recess with my classmates, because an individual type of thing, team play I would be part of a team. If it's a group play, I'd be part of the group. But I never did have too many close friends during grammar school. Maybe one. Yeah, Amy Mihara, I think she was the only one that befriended me, came home with me and kind of befriended me at that time, that's about it.

TI: So were you, how you and your family were treated? Were you aware of any discrimination being Japanese?

DI: How did my family treat me?

TI: No, now did -- I'm sorry, were you aware of any discrimination against you and your family being Japanese?

DI: No, not in Mountain View, because there were so many minorities in Mountain View: the Slavonians, the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Japanese, we're all in that neighborhood all mixed together. We loved the Portuguese fiesta. There must have been a lot of Portuguese because we had this big fiesta down the main street of Mountain View. Everybody dressed up in historic costumes, it was fun watching.

TI: How about high school? What was high school like?

DI: I only had --

TI: I'm sorry, did you go to Mountain View High?

DI: I was in high school just a few months before evacuation came. I came home from school one day and my parents had packed everything under the truck and told me we were leaving for Utah.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright &copy; 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.