<Begin Segment 11>

TL: Did you have any favorite subjects in the high school?

HN: I think I liked music because the music teacher, oh, she, she was a little teacher, but she had a very nice voice. And she started a choir, and I was able to join the choir. And she taught us, they wanted us to learn the sounds of all the notes. And she would play a certain note, and we would say what that note was. So I think we learned a lot in music from her. And then the history was, it was interesting, too. We learned about the Japanese history. And, oh, we had reading, language arts. The teacher was from, he was a graduate (of) Waseda University in Japan. He was a young teacher, and he taught basketball. Yeah, so, oh, it was nice, before the war started.

Then after the war started, I think, from the, when we were junior, the war was getting pretty bad. And I think they figured Japan was losing. That's when they mobilized all the high school kids to go to this town, Hikari, to help out with the factory workers, making parts. I don't know what kind of parts we were making, but it must have been for the submarines or boats or something. So after junior, during the junior and senior year we didn't learn too much in school because we were working all the time.

TL: Did you still wear your school uniform when you went to the factory?

HN: Uh-huh. Then we had to take a train.

TL: Did that take a long time?

HN: I think it took about thirty, forty minutes to go there.

TL: One way, though, yeah?

HN: So eight --

TL: And then you spend, do you spend most of the day there in the factory, then take the train and --

HN: Come back again. And the school had this big field. And they raised rice, and they had vegetable garden there.

TL: Oh.

HN: So we kind of had to help out there, too.

TL: Was this the one way for the school to kind of help the war effort, by producing food, too?

HN: Food. I think so, plus for the dormitory.

TL: Oh, right.

HN: But we didn't do too much studying then because I think they were more worried about how they were going to try to win the war, I think.

TL: So once the United States and Japan were at war with each other, were you able to stay in contact with your father?

HN: No, no. No, we didn't have any contact with our father all during the war.

TL: And was there any news, for example, about the concentration camps in the United States?

HN: No, we didn't hear anything about that.

TL: So when is the first time that you were able to reestablish contact?

HN: With my father? Gee, it must have been right after the war, about 19 -- the war ended at '45, August, I think.

TL: Yes.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.