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TI: Now going back to high school, what year did you graduate from high school?

MM: High school? Now that's... here is junior high, and right in Hood River High School, too, was Hood River High School, three years. And that was a big football field and everything, that kind of a thing. So there were quite a few Japanese, but not that many.

TI: And so you must have graduated in, what, 1937?

MM: '37.

TI: And tell me a little bit more about high school. What are some memories of going to high school in Hood River?

MM: Hood River High School? It was a nice, new high school, three years. We had all kinds of activities there, glee club, plays, everything. It was fun.

TI: And after you finished high school, what did you do?

MM: Then went to Oregon State.

TI: Now, was that common for women to go to college at this time?

MM: Not so many women, more men, though. But then they gradually started going. They had big families, they all went. But then some came back and became farmers, others went on (as) professionals.

TI: Now, to go to college, was that something that you wanted to do, or your parents thought you should go?

MM: My parents were always, since we were little kids, "You have to go to school, you have to go to school, or you won't be any good. You can't take it away from you." And they also said we had to go to Sunday school, had to go to Sunday school, and they were Nichiren Buddhist until after the war, they became First Methodist. But they insisted. And it was held right at that elementary school, we didn't have a church in the country, in the auditorium. We'd go to school, it'd snow. You know, would be pretty close to Mt. Hood, so we'd have up to our window sometimes. My dad said, "You have to go to school," so he'd get boots up to here, and he'd make footsteps, like that, and we had to go in those footsteps and walk a mile to school. We never missed.

TI: So he would go before you just to make a path so you could go to school.

MM: Go to school. Oh, he didn't want us to skip school or anything. Very strict about that.

TI: And so when it came to college, he also wanted you to go to college? Did he tell you what you should study?

MM: No, no. So my older sister Mikie was a teacher, and I took business and secretarial, and we both got scholarships. Tuition was, I had scholarship the last year, and she had scholarship one year, too. It was only ninety dollar tuition then.

TI: Was that how you chose the college you went to?

MM: Oregon State?

TI: Yeah, because you got a scholarship there?

MM: I don't know how we both chose Oregon State. My third (sister) went to Oregon State, too, but got to finish only, not quite two years, the war came.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2014 Densho. All Rights Reserved.