<Begin Segment 7>

TI: So the junior high school in (Hood River city) was only one year, or freshman year?

MM: The junior, yes, one year. And we had to be transported thirteen miles every day by bus.

TI: Down to the Hood River...

MM: Because there wasn't any other.

TI: But going back to your elementary school, about twenty-five students, so that meant maybe about eight to ten were white, and the rest were Japanese?

MM: About twenty, twenty-five in each class. (Fourteen were Caucasian and seven were Japanese). It was a nice school. We had a baseball diamond in the back, had a big auditorium in the center.

TI: Now were there any difficulties or tension between the whites and the Japanese?

MM: No.

TI: So you got along really well?

MM: Not that I... no, those days, no. There weren't any other minority groups at that time. Now I think there are, but they were just either Japanese or Caucasian.

TI: And the Caucasians, what ethnicity, I mean, what countries did their parents come from or their families come from? Were they from Europe, or from what countries?

MM: There were a couple of Italian families I remember, but they're all just European, just Caucasian, I believe. And they worked at the sawmill, because the sawmill was right here along the river, they had little residential homes here. And then all, sawmill people all lived there.

TI: Did any of them, were any of them also farmers, too?

MM: Not those people that lived down there by the river, by the sawmill. But there were a few farmers up on the Dee Flat, and some raised chicken and turkeys and farmed a little. And others, several had farms, but Japanese was majority of the farmers up there.

TI: And how did the workers get along with the Japanese, the workers who were at the sawmill, the Caucasian workers? How did they get along?

MM: Oh, they seemed to be just fine.

TI: So it sounds like at Dee, there was really good, kind of, race relations back and forth between the whites and the Japanese?

MM: I didn't think they had any trouble, we never did. We had Filipino and Hispanic workers coming in to pick food even then, but not too many. Not like right now.

TI: Because I was reading the book Stubborn Twig, you know, that book, and they talk about maybe in Hood River city, that sometimes there was tension between the whites and the Japanese. And I was just curious what it was like in Dee.

MM: Well, we didn't feel it in Dee, but I guess there were in Hood River more, I think. But they were really against us when the wartime came.

TI: Well, we'll get to that later. Because next you talked about taking the bus to go to school. So describe that, what was it like when you made that transition from the Dee Elementary...

MM: Elementary school?

TI: ...to Hood River city during school.

MM: Well, I think we just integrated okay. We didn't feel anything. No, it was an old junior high, so I remember it was an old building right in Hood River. And I don't know why they didn't deal with the high school for four years, but it's three years, it was. But now it's different. Now it's completely different. They have one big high school, Hood River High School.

[Interruption]

TI: And so there were fewer Japanese?

MM: (The majority of the Hood River city people were Caucasians. The Yasui family were the only Japanese living in the city. The Japanese farmers lived in rural Hood River County areas, as Dee, Odell, Oak Grove, Pine Grove and Parkdale.)

TI: And so what percentage would you say were Japanese?

MM: Oh, gee. They're also Hood River, not just Dee. They were Oak Grove, (...) Parkdale, different sections. A few Japanese farmers, but they were all farmers. Gee, there weren't too many of us, I couldn't say exactly how many.

TI: Like in a class, maybe if you went to one of your classes...

MM: No majority, no, very minority.

TI: But maybe, like, three or four?

MM: In a class, yes.

TI: And were there ever any problems now in Hood River when you had more whites than Japanese, or was it about the, still the same?

MM: Oh, it's about the same. We didn't feel any animosity then, it was the war time it got bad.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2014 Densho. All Rights Reserved.