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FA: In 1941 you were about fourteen years old.

SH: Yes.

FA: And you were then starting in high school?

SH: I was already in high school, yes. I believe I was already in high school.

FA: So you had been in an elementary school that was outside of the Larimer district?

SH: Right, it was called the Twenty-fourth Street School. And I was in the Twenty-fourth Street School until about the fourth grade, I believe, and then our area was overcrowded they said, so they moved us to Garden Place School which was, we had to take a bus and go there. And the Twenty-fourth Street School had many Hispanics and all in it, but then the Garden Place School was all Caucasians, and it seemed like it was a little bit different. But when I was there, I think I learned a lot more. In fact, while I was there, I skipped a grade. So even if I had been behind in school, I skipped and caught up.

AH: And where was the high school?

SH: The high school was about a mile and a half or two miles away, and we had to walk there every day. It was called Manual High, and there were many, many black people there, and so it was all kinds of groups. But it was interesting because when I went to junior high, we were placed into what they called a core class. And as I was in the class I learned that the core class was a little different because it seemed to be according to how well you do in school. And so we were supposedly in the number one core class, so our teacher and the second one, who had number two core class, would have little matches where we had to work against each other to see which room had the better students. And so it was an interesting class, but because of that, later on, the courses we took were more, what would you say, planned for us. And we had to take the algebra and the higher classes, and we went all together through the whole three grades until we got to high school. And so I had to take not only algebra, but Latin class. And our social studies was a little different from others. And others could take, people that were not in our class could take typing and classes like that, business classes, but we were not in those classes because we didn't have the time. It was sort of determined, predetermined what we would have each year.

AH: School can be a very enriching thing, cosmopolitan experiences, opening up different aspects of life and society and everything else, and cultures, but the home was also an important place where people get schooled. You mentioned that there were books and things there. Was there any guidance from your mother or your father in terms of learning different kinds of things that you carry with you even to this day?

SH: Right. My father was very much a person who believed in education, so he was the one who would be talking, and it wasn't except at dinnertime, usually, when he would talk to us. And he said it was very important to get a good education and to go on to college and to be able to have a profession where you didn't have to work under somebody. And so he always said it was important to do all your work, to study hard, and he talked about things like this, and he talked about professions like being a pharmacist or a doctor or something like that so that you can be on your own. He was not a person who, what would you say, played a lot with children. As younger children he did take us to the parks and all, but he didn't spend time playing with us because he was always busy. But he was always very pleasant, and when we came home from school, the first thing we saw was our dad and he was usually either standing up by his tailoring table, which was quite high, and he would stand there and do his tailoring. Or he would be on top, and he would be cross-legged and doing his work up there. And then we had a lower table on the other side, and my mom would be working there, and she was always his helper. And so she helped him doing certain, I guess, finer or different things, and then he would do the work that was expected.

AH: And your mom was comparatively young, I mean, in comparison with your dad.

SH: Yes.

AH: And what kinds of things would she bring to you, education, enrichment?

SH: She was sixteen years younger than my dad, and she was not very well-educated, I don't think. My dad was the one who was, had more education, and she was so young when she got married. I have a feeling that she was probably sixteen years old. And so, and she was an only child, and she was not only an only child, but she was brought up by her mother and a grandmother. And I think it was, I surmised that it was because in those days, the fathers came to the United States to work, so he was on a farm working. And then the mother stayed to take care of her husband's mother. And so my mother was spoiled, and she always said that her grandmother carried her around when she was six or seven years old still on her back, and just treated her so nicely. And so my mother didn't have much to give us in a lot of ways, I think.

AH: My own father was a general building contractor, but he provided disincentives for my brother and I to learn the manual trades and things, because he wanted us to go on to the university. Did you have that experience or did you learn to be pretty good in terms of what a tailor does? Do you sew things yourself these days?

SH: I do, but I didn't learn anything then. It was just very, very, maybe from junior high, high school on, a little bit that they gave us, but they didn't do much in sewing to teach us about things like that.

AH: So you didn't get impressed into working with the family business?

SH: Not in the tailoring, no. Because we were too busy going to school, and not only to our regular school during the day, but from four to six every day, we rushed home and we immediately went to Japanese school and studied Japanese for two hours a day. So much of the work that we had to study at home was in the Japanese language, where we had to learn to read and write Japanese.

AH: Now your mom got married at sixteen, and you actually ended up getting married about nineteen?

SH: Exactly.

AH: What was your interest in the opposite gender or whatever, sex, at that time when you were fourteen years old? What were your sort of social lives?

SH: We didn't have much of a social life. It was just where you would go to maybe church and you would see people, but there was not that kind of interest much. And then in the school, in the junior high and all, I was the only Japanese American person in the class. And so I had to come home every day and help, and by that time there were things to do in the printing shop. And so I didn't have a chance at all to get to know the kids in the class.

AH: So is it fair to say you did not have a boyfriend before the war?

SH: Not before the war, not at all. We weren't, we thought there was something in the family that said we weren't allowed to date. [Laughs] It was a different time period then.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.