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BN: Now, when you got there, it was like spring, the summer, and then you started school then in fall, right?

WS: Right.

BN: And this is middle school or junior high school. What do you remember about the schooling there?

WS: When we got there, we were in the middle of, did we go about April? So one of the gals put together a little class, so we met, that was our seventh grade, I think. So we had a little bit of class for seventh grade, just a few of us. And then September we started classes, different classes. We didn't have any books, didn't have enough chairs and tables and stuff. It was okay.

BN: Were the teachers that you had, were they Caucasian or were some also Nisei?

WS: I think they were mixed. But they were empathetic, that's why they were there.

BN: Did you feel like you were getting as good an education as on the outside?

WS: No, probably not.

BN: Is there a particular favorite teacher that you remember?

WS: I think some of the people were, picked on some of those white teachers, which was not good.

BN: Some of the teachers?

WS: No, students.

BN: Oh, I see, picked on the...

WS: White teachers. They were there because they wanted to be.

BN: What about other kind of activities? Boy Scouts, sports, dances, movies?

WS: Well, the people in each block had their own thing. And we were up by the hospital, so 29 and 30, 28. We built our own basketball court, and people would play sports.

BN: Were you someone that enjoyed playing sports?

WS: Well, the kids had a pretty good time, I mean, they could do anything they want. We played a lot of Monopoly and a lot of sports. Kids were unsupervised.

BN: Were you old enough to go to the dances?

WS: Yeah. Not really, but high school.

BN: So you did go to some of the dances at Manzanar?

WS: Yeah, I was in ninth grade, I don't know what... seventh grade, I don't know what class I was in. That's when we learned how to dance and everything.

BN: And then your brother also was a year and a half or two years older. Was he involved in any of those things?

WS: Yeah, he's a bright kid, very smart, learned how to play saxophone by himself. And he joined this band, so they had this, what do they call it? They had the band in Manzanar, and he played in that band for the dances and stuff, it was good.

BN: That he picked up on his own?

WS: Yeah.

BN: This is, you're talking about the Jive Bombers?

WS: Jive Bombers, yeah. Yeah, he didn't know how to play, just teach himself.

BN: Another thing I wanted to ask you about is your block was also near the Children's Village, right?

WS: Right, next door.

BN: Do you have memories of the Children's Village and did you actually interact with any of the orphans?

WS: Yeah, if anything, we did interact with them a little bit, because they had no place else to go. So we got to know some of them, which was good.

BN: Did some of the kids give them a hard time, or were they kind of accepted as...

WS: Well, some of them got a hard time, because some of the kids the orphanage were mixed, so they were given a hard time.

BN: Was there... this is a little off subject, what was the term that was used at that time for someone who was of mixed race ancestry? Someone was asking me this.

WS: I don't know. Mixed race?

BN: Just "mixed race"?

WS: Those were the people who were in the orphanage.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.