<Begin Segment 9>

DG: Okay. Back to when you started kindergarten, you went on Thirteenth and Weller.

NS: I was four years old then and the kindergarten had -- there was a kindergarten at the Methodist church, and so I remember going there. And I did get certificate of graduation from there.

DG: Now, was that Japanese?

NS: There was an English teacher, but the students were all Japanese and about my age. A lot of them were, a lot of them have gone back to Japan since then.

DG: So you spoke Japanese?

NS: No, we spoke English then. But at home we had to speak Japanese because of my grandmother and my mother. And I went to first four grades to Pacific School and went to the Japanese school from 4:00 to 5:00 after that. So I went eight years to the Japanese language school also.

DG: Well, you knew Billie by then, right, Tashiro?

NS: Yes, she was in, probably in my Japanese school class. And then we had a girl's group that met on Saturdays, as I said, and I think she was in that group, too.

DG: So moving on to junior high age...

NS: We didn't have junior highs in those days. It was grade school and then high school. So we had eight years at Washington School and then four years at Garfield. But then we had a flu epidemic around when I was about ten years old, and I was very sick at that time, I remember. I missed a lot of school, as a lot of other people did too at the same time. The hospitals were full and we couldn't get any rooms then. And so my mother took care of me. Somehow or the other I lost a half a grade, and I went to summer school then. Broadway High School had summer schools, and so I took courses there and made up my courses so that I graduated from Garfield in 1927 with all my credits.

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