<Begin Segment 19>

TI: One question that comes to mind in, given that you had your high school experience from your freshman, sophomore and junior year... I just wanted to get a sense of the quality of education in the camps for high school. You've talked about certain teachers, some good, some really poor. But overall, what was your sense of the education in camp at the high school level?

HM: I think we were... we had some very good teachers that were very highly motivated teachers. On the other hand, we had some teachers that didn't create enough of a challenge for us. And I... I guess I would have preferred going to a conventional high school. The curriculum was more versatile for a lot of us -- flexible. The facilities would have been a lot better. There's a lot of things that I would have preferred rather than having to go to the high school in the camp.

TI: Well going back to what Mrs. Pollock said your freshman year trying to get people thinking about the future in terms of college and other things. Do you think the experience in the high school in camp, you know, overall for students, was that a good preparation for college?

HM: Well there was an overwhelming cloud over us. One was, well, if we graduated from high school let's say in... you had the option of going into the army at that point, or you could try to pursue some kind of college career outside the camp. And the economic system wouldn't provide this capability. So the future was pretty bleak for kids in my age bracket. And this is what caused a lot of our behavior patterns to kind of change. We were very obedient kids at the time we started into the process, but come the third year, a lot of us were becoming quite antagonistic toward what was happening to us. And I think this caused the student behavior to not be as compliant as it was early on. The teachers were having a harder time with us.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.