<Begin Segment 27>

RT: My brother got a little bit more of the... let's say, it wasn't very pleasant in some classes. Sometimes it was the teacher that made it a little unpleasant, and I'm sure she was smart enough. It was deliberate. And it was sort of -- at that time, maybe she just was not being deliberately cruel, but certainly was not very kind. And later on, of course, she became a champion for us. And I guess she just found out that we worked hard, and we were respectful no matter what she did. And she was a music teacher and we took lessons, I did, and then my sister took lessons and really excelled with this same woman who was... she just singled out my brother in front of the whole class. It was just one of those things that was not called for.

AI: So in the beginning, there were some hard times and some difficult treatment.

RT: Oh, in this school, some. And of course, there were quite a few Japanese Americans in that school at that time because there were a lot of people that had come out for the beets, and some that stayed. The town was, was even worse, I must say. I'd never... well, the word "Jap" was very derogatory and we didn't hear that much in Bellevue, but in... now Chinook, I mean, this is a sort of, not a wild west town, but of course, it's different. And there were signs and of course, we would have to walk through the town. I know I did because I would have to wait for my brothers. This was probably later on and you would walk down the main street and a lot of the, not a lot, but several establishments, "No Japs allowed," and that was... I don't know. They must pick up on it from each other. They feed on each other, and that lasted all through the war years. Yeah.

<End Segment 27> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.