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AI: And can you think back to your high school days... let's see. Did you say that you went to high school in the Redmond district?

CN: Yeah, Redmond, junior high and high school at Redmond.

AI: And can you think about what a typical day was like for you when you were in high school? Starting when you first got up in the morning. What would a day be like?

CN: With my mother yelling from downstairs. [Laughs] And then I would, I would start walking and go next door and pick up my three friends. And then we'd walk some more and pick up a couple more people, and then we went on a bus, which was, to me, a new experience. And it was, it was fun. And we had a nice bus driver who had pet names for everyone, and he was always so jolly and so nice. And then it was... I will stop right here and say that the best thing that happened to me was moving to Kirkland, because I made -- not that Bellevue was not good -- but the, the kids didn't tease me about my dark skin. And also it was, well, I got into school (activities) and all sorts of extracurricular activities. I'm sure they had it in Bellevue, but I was not aware of it. Even in junior high and grade school, they had class officers and all, even though, with one of my classes, one year, that is, that we chose the colors black and blue for our, our class colors. And we were just not very, not very nice, nice students, but we had fun, though. But I enjoyed my time in Redmond very, very much.

AI: So even though you had mentioned that there were, one of big changes was that there were quite a few more hakujin classmates and quite a few less Nisei classmates. For you, it was, on the whole, a positive change.

CN: It was an extremely good change. I still keep up with my friends in Redmond because several of them, or quite a few of them, still live there in the houses that their grandparents and parents and great-grandparents had built.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.