<Begin Segment 7>

TI: Let's talk about school. What was school like at Poston?

SA: It was a... I mean, we went to school, and I still remember the teacher that I had, his name was Steve Nakashima. In fact, he lived here locally here. And he was my grammar school teacher. And we... it was nondescript. I mean, we just did our thing, nothing special.

TI: Would you say the quality of education was about the same as before the war?

SA: Well, I think that everybody did... I think the standards were probably a little bit lower, but I think everybody studied hard. And so I don't think we lost that much. And there were a lot of Caucasian teachers that came in to help, too. So I think the standards were, made sure that the standards were far enough above the line to make it worthwhile.

TI: Yeah, so earlier you talked about how in school in Saratoga, you thought of yourself as maybe, or others thought of you as an average student?

SA: Yeah, yeah.

TI: How about in Poston in terms of your classmates? How would you rate yourself with the other students?

SA: Probably about average.

TI: I'm going to have to figure out, so what made you so successful? [Laughs] I haven't found it yet; we'll keep going. So kind of average student. Okay, any other memories from Poston that you enjoyed doing? I think fishing, you talked about fishing.

SA: Oh, yeah, we did a lot of fishing.

TI: So tell me about that.

SA: In fact, these were all our own group of friends. So we went fishing because we were close to the Colorado River, and we had a lot of canals. So there were places that you can catch perch and bluegills and bass. So we did a lot of fishing. In fact, we even built a pond in the front yard. My dad helped us put it together, and I remember we used to catch largemouth bass that we put in the pond, and then we would catch carp and feed the carp to the bass. So we'd feed 'em big fish so that the bass would have this fish in his mouth for about three days. [Laughs]

TI: Oh, my. And so you just liked to do it and just watch the fish?

SA: Yeah, yeah. I still remember all that. We had a lot of fun doing that. I remember my friend got bit by a scorpion, we were sitting on the bank fishing, so I remember that, too.

TI: And when he got bit by a scorpion, did they take him to the hospital?

SA: Well, it turned out that scorpion's sting, we feared it a lot, but it wasn't really that bad.

TI: Oh, that's interesting. I always thought of scorpion stings as being really bad.

SA: I thought he was going to really get sick, but he really didn't get that sick.

TI: But it's worse than a bee sting...

SA: Oh, yeah. No, it hurt. Boy, did he run home fast. [Laughs]

TI: And other kind of interesting memories or stories from this time?

SA: Oh, yeah, because we used to go fishing and we got caught in a big thunderstorm. And there were, I think, about four of us, and we were running home with a fishing pole, and lightning struck and knocked a tree, probably like a hundred feet away. Boy, that was really scary.

TI: And what were you supposed to do when you were in a thunderstorm? On the West Coast we don't have those kind of things. Are they supposed to be...

SA: We just ran. [Laughs]

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.