Densho Digital Archive - Henry Miyatake Interview II (denshovh-mhenry-02-0006)

<Begin Segment 6>

TI: So why don't you go on and, and tell me, as a twelve year old boy you're, you're going Minidoka. It's still in the summer at this point.

HM: Yeah. We're now in September now.

TI: Okay, so school is almost starting.

HM: Yeah. School's... they have to start school because they have to have so many days in the calendar year for them to be accredited. Some, some requirement that the government was trying to make some kind of adjustment to.

TI: Well now tell me about that because I imagine it's pretty chaotic given that a lot of facilities haven't been completed yet. This is going to be the first year. There are lots of children. Why, why don't you talk about that first year in school.

HM: Well they elected to use Block 21 which was the regular barrack area, for the school, high school. And we became a part of the WRA system which was part of the Department of the Interior. And consequently the Department of Interior ground rules for school systems were being used. And the largest part of the education process for the Department of the Interior at that time was the Bureau of Indian Affairs which was a sub-agency of the Department of Interior. So consequently the Department of Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs criteria was the starting point for the high school. And they brought in a lot of teachers from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. They also recruited a lot of the Nisei personnel that had teaching certificates and teaching capabilities. And a lot of them were very talented, but they were working for $16 or $19 a month. Whereas the Bureau of Indian Affairs personnel were getting $150 and up per month. So there was a huge disparity in salary. But the range of the teaching talent ranged from very mediocre -- these people were so used to teaching Bureau of Indian Affairs children that they had no challenge to their educational process -- and those that had other objectives, like the teacher I was fortunate to have in my freshman year. She was a wife of a mining engineer, and he happened to be a pilot and he became a marine fighter pilot and he was flying F-4U's during the war. But she felt that there was some kind of injustice being done to these people and she was trying to do her part to help the people that were in the camp. She had very honorable intentions and she had, she had every intent that she would try to rectify some of the wrongs that were being done to us.

TI: And so she volunteered through the Bureau of Indian Affairs to teach at, in the camp specifically?

HM: Yes. And it was her mission. And since her husband was in the Marines at that time she felt that she would occupy her time by being, doing something positive for her own career as well as the people in the camp.

TI: I'm trying to understand why this woman would want to do this, whether or not she had some exposure to Japanese Americans prior to the war and that's why she wanted to do this or...

HM: No, she read about what had happened to us. And she followed up by contacting the Department of the Interior. And they said that there were teaching professions available in Minidoka. And her husband had her, the most recent assignment in Idaho as a mining engineer.