<Begin Segment 9>

DG: So moving on to your high school years.

FN: Uh-huh...

DG: Then...

FN: Well high school, I... When I was in the seventh grade there was a Tsukimoto family that lived in Blanchard area. You know where Blanchard is, on Chuckanut Drive. They had a, they ran the oyster company there. And so they wanted me to come, come up there and kind of baby-sit their daughter, to take her to school. To walk back... she was only in about first grade and so I used to take her to school a lot. It was about a mile I think that we walked every day. And I lived there for, for a year. So I lived, I went to Blanchard School one year. And then from there I went in, the family had moved to Bellingham again so then I went to grade school in Bellingham.

DG: So was that hard for you to leave your family and go there?

FN: No, my family was up in Bellingham.

DG: No, I mean to...

FN: Oh you mean the first thing. Well, I don't know, it's just Mom said, "You can go," so, I just went. [Laughs] You know, things like that, I, I just didn't worry about it...you know, just...

DG: Did what there was to do.

FN: And in those days like Blanchard School was compared to Burlington. Burlington there's quite a few students in the class, but there was only about seven, maybe sixth graders there was only about seven or eight or you know. And then the whole room only had at least fifteen or twenty at the most. So I was there one year and then...

DG: Was education stressed in your family?

FN: Huh?

DG: Was education stressed in your family at all?

FN: Well we, we never... we just. No... I don't think Mother and Dad ever thought of that the kids would go on to college, because well the family being as large as it was, it's pretty hard to even think of.

DG: Oh, and then you said that your older sister even quit.

FN: My, my. See and when we went to Bellingham as I told you, they, they had, they ran a noodle house. And since Dad was, at that time Dad had... at the oyster company there, there were other Japanese bachelors living there. So Dad went to live with them and Mother and my oldest sister, well, they ran the noodle house. That's...

DG: So your dad went to work in the oyster.

FN: In the oyster. Dad was, I don't, we don't recall where he ever learned to build buildings, but he was good at building. So he used to, at the oyster company they had to have scows to bring the oysters in from the bay and he used to build those things. And they're. I don't know whether, how he ever, you know, was able to construct. And then from Bellingham my mother decided that the noodle house was just a little too much for her, so she moved back to Blanchard.

DG: Now before we move back to Blanchard in the noodle house then, your sister and your mother ran the noodle house.

FN: Yeah, uh-huh, uh-huh.

DG: And your sister quit school to help her do that.

FN: Yeah she, she quit school. She quit school when she was, I think she went to sophomore. Sophomore year, but she quit school because Mom needed her help. But...

DG: Well it seems like a lot of families were having hardship and so you didn't, it, you didn't feel that that was. It's just something you guys did, right?

FN: Well,

DG: That you didn't think it was especially hard or special.

FN: No, we just all had to pitch in and do whatever had, had to be done.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.