<Begin Segment 9>

TI: And so tell me about your friends. Who would you hang out with?

FS: Well, the interesting thing is, on that, Tom, I had a lot of Caucasian friends as well as Japanese friends. Joe Mochizuki, no relation to Ken, but a Mochizuki family lived there. And then there was the Murakamis, Kubotas, I'm still in touch with Jim, he's in Phoenix. He's the Jim Kubota who you may know as his son has been writing the Kuroki films and all, that's his dad, Jim, was my good friend. And Mits Katayama, Mits Katayama, who recently passed away, he's another one of my friends. But interesting thing is, I entered first grade (with) that group (who) just had their seventieth anniversary from high school. Although I didn't graduate with them, since I'd come back, and even before I came back, they were looking me up. And I went to this anniversary gathering in Tacoma, and one of the guys is a fellow by the name of John Sager who lives in Mercer Island, I went to school with him from first grade. His wife, who's now passed away, Joanne Cole, a whole bunch of 'em, Dorothy Rutledge, lives over in Lacey now, but she was the ex-mayor of that town on the way out to the ocean.

TI: Aberdeen?

FS: Aberdeen. She's the ex-mayor of Aberdeen, those were all my first grade...

TI: And this was a seventieth anniversary of the high school class?

FS: Yes.

TI: Okay, because, yeah, they're all eighty-eight.

FS: Yes. And there were sixteen of us there.

TI: Now did anyone at the reunion, did they talk about the war and how you and others, Japanese, had to leave?

FS: Very openly.

TI: And what did they say?

FS: And they recall wondering why I had to leave. In fact, John Sager recounts how they visited me at "Camp Harmony," which he did, and that all of the kids were wondering why we had to move away. And I told that group the other day, couple weeks ago when I met with them, I said, "You know, I have to thank all you guys. Because, me, as a little kid, Japanese American kid, in a community like this, you all are the ones who gave me the confidence to fight the battles that I had to face when I had the jobs I had." I never had any problems, but the foundation is because all these kids that I went to school with were always my friends and were always supportive of me. In fact, one of my friends, Jack Huntington, from first grade, his father was a hop king in Sumner. And I remember when I was a little kid, and I first went to his house, they had this big, palatial place, hop king's residence. And I went in that place and I went, wow, what a beautiful place. But they treated me like one of their own. And that's the kind of childhood that I enjoyed. Jack's younger sister Belle, I'm still in contact with. Jack's older brother was a good friend of my brother John's, they played football together. He used to write to me, he just passed away a couple years ago also. But it's that kind of a community that we came from. And we didn't really see prejudice, per se.

TI: That's wonderful. It sounds like this nurturing environment that you grew up in. Talk about school. How were you in school? If a teacher had to describe Frank Sato as a student, what would he or she say?

FS: She'd probably say that I was a good student, which I think I was, I always got pretty good grades. You know, and this goes back to my mother. My mother used to instill in us, study hard, they could never take away what's in here. [Indicates head]. So she always instilled us, from the time we were kids, study hard, work hard, do good. And I was always a pretty good student.

TI: When you talk about having these, sort of, conversations with your mother, what language did she speak to you in? Was it Japanese or English?

FS: Japanese. My mother and dad spoke very little English, just enough words... in fact, it's amazing to me that my dad used to conduct business. But no, they didn't speak much English, not very good.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2017 Densho. All Rights Reserved.