<Begin Segment 3>

AI: Well, now can you tell me a little bit about some of your earliest memories? For example, maybe when you started school?

RT: I know that we went to kindergarten and it was in downtown Bellevue, which wasn't very large; and the building, I think, used to be the high school at one time. Anyway, it was an old building and it housed the kindergarten and the first grade. And we were students there. And when we went to second grade, then we went to the regular elementary school, in Bellevue. And I remember that those teachers that we had, in kindergarten and first grade, taught all of us. In other words, the top three, the oldest three. We had probably one class of kindergarteners and the same when we were in first grade. That was about the population of the Bellevue schools, about one class of each, each grade.

AI: And do you remember, were there very many other Japanese American kids in your class?

RT: Not in my class. I don't recall that there were too many. The ones that I grew up with -- there was one boy, Tom Hayashi, who used to, who lived not too far away from us, and there're probably half a dozen girls that were in the same class as I. This continued through elementary school. Once you get to high school, then, of course, the population increases 'cause they come from outlying areas. And, so there were more kids and also then more Japanese American kids.

AI: Were there any other racial minorities that you recall in your school?

RT: I don't think that we considered them minorities and maybe they didn't either, but there were some Syrian kids. They were a first-generation, first-generation. and the second generation -- they would be Nisei, too -- kids were in the school. In fact, the one family that I remember lived just two farms down, very small farms so that, you know, within walking distance, and they were quite a large family. And some of the older members of that family, the older children, went to school with my mother and uncle and my aunts, whereas the youngest of the family were in my class. So you can see that it was quite a large family and quite extended age range in that family.

AI: Right.

RT: As far as African Americans, they were something we heard about, read about, but never saw at that time. And I believe that, probably when we were in the upper elementary school, I believe that one African American kid came into school, and it was almost an oddity. It was something to, that we had never experienced before. But aside from that, there were no minorities. We were probably the minority.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.