<Begin Segment 13>

BY: And so what was high school like for you? Did you also enjoy high school?

DR: I had so much fun in high school.

BY: What kind of stuff did you do, or can you tell us? [Laughs]

DR: I don't know if I should tell you. I don't know, I kind of had a reputation. That's part of the reason I left Seattle.

TI: Now we're getting to the good stuff.

DR: Because I didn't want to just hang with the Japanese kids, Japanese and Chinese kids.

BY: Did they mostly hang with each other?

DR: Yeah, they were pretty cliquish. And especially the boys. I thought, "You boys are so boring." I did not like Japanese boys. But I had a lot of Japanese girlfriends. So I used to just hang out with everybody, so I had this reputation among the Nihonjin. I was kind of loud and kind of boisterous.

TI: Non-Japanese American.

DR: Yeah, very non. "She's not one of us." But the girls and I got along really well.

BY: So how do you think your friends would have described you at your high school? If they said, "What's that Dotti like?"

DR: "She's a yogore." [Laughs]

BY: Oh, yogore.

DR: Just, I don't know, just different.

BY: A little rebellious, were you?

DR: Yeah, that's a good word.

BY: But you enjoyed school?

DR: I loved it. I loved it. I loved my teachers. And I also worked, got an internship job with the telephone company during the time I was in high school. So I'd go and work on, usually on Saturday and Sunday. And my favorite hours were from, it was the midnight shift.

BY: And what would you do?

DR: I was doing information operating.

BY: Like 911 kind of stuff?

DR: No, no, just people would call... this is in the old days where you call and...

BY: Oh, for information?

DR: ...yeah, 411 for a telephone number or something like that.

BY: So that was your job?

DR: Yeah. But I loved the Saturday midnight shift. All the old ladies, all the grandmas worked that shift. And they used to spoil me rotten, bring me all kinds of goodies. And that shift, there weren't too many calls coming in, so we had a lot of time to chat.

TI: So I'm just curious. When someone would call and needed to get a phone number, would you just have, like, a phone book?

DR: Yeah, this huge phone book. You learned how to flip the pages, and easy to find the numbers. And you know, it was funny because one time I answered this call, and this person's on the line, and I said, "Mich, is that you?" And he says, "Yeah."

TI: Oh, so you recognized the voice.

DR: I recognized his voice, yeah.

BY: And so how long did you do that? Was that just a short period?

DR: Yeah, just through high school.

BY: I see.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.