<Begin Segment 9>

TL: What are some of the other differences you remember about going to school in Japan in this little town?

HN: Well, we had, all had to wear uniforms.

TL: Can you describe those?

HN: It was a sailor, navy blue, kind of like a gabardine top. And the skirts were all pleated. And we didn't have to iron the skirts because we used to fold it, the pleats, and then we used to sleep on it.

TL: That's very creative.

HN: They sleep on the futons. That's how they used to iron their skirts. And every morning before classes the whole school had to go out to the playground. And I think we sang the Japanese anthem, and then we did our exercising. Then we'd go to our classroom. And they didn't have janitors over there in the schools, so all the kids had to do the cleaning.

TL: Oh.

HN: Like the yard and the school, even the bathrooms.

TL: So did they assign that to a class or to individuals?

HN: Yes. The classes, all different classes had to do certain chores.

TL: Was the school very much bigger than the one you had attended in Spokane?

HN: Let's see, the -- no. Probably about same. But we didn't go to grade school that long. We only went to grade school about a year. Then high school was four years. And they took -- you have to take a test to get into high school over there. And they only take 150, so there was fifty in each class 'cause they only had three classes for each grade. So that was 150, with four classes, 600. Six hundred students in the high school.

TL: And were these all girls, and the boys went to a separate school?

HN: Yeah. We went to a all-girls high school. And they came from all over. They came from, oh, cities, towns. Oh, they used to ride on the train and come, and they even had a dormitory for kids that lived too far. But it was a prefectural high school, they called it. Japanese girls prefectural high school, the one we went to.

TL: Was the exam to test in, was that a comprehensive exam and you had to get a really high score?

HN: I guess so because there's quite a few kids that tried to get into that high school, and they had to eliminate them by exam. But they never told us what our score was.

TL: But you and your sister both got to go.

HN: Uh-huh. I think they kind of thought we were from America, and they probably felt sorry for us, so maybe they let us in school. [Laughs]

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.