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EG: Tell me something about outside of the family. Growing up, school, Seattle, neighborhood and so on. How was it for you?

FF: Well, I went to a, I went to grade school in Washington School. Now, there's still a Washington Junior High School. But this Washington Elementary School was situated... you know where the present Kawabe House is? Just directly east of that, is a sort of a vacant lot right now near, near the Wonder Bakery. But it used to be there and I went to, I went there from kindergarten to the eighth grade. And the population there was really a lot of mostly Sephardic, Sephardic Jews and a few smattering of Chinese, a few Japanese, very few gentiles, I guess. [Laughs] Anyway, I... I don't know what to say about that experience. It was great, I mean, I have some pleasant memories of going to Washington School. I can remember myself as being a mediocre to lousy student. But the... interestingly enough, here about three or four years ago we had a reunion of our class. The group of kids that have been together since kindergarten, and it was great fun. I mean, just by coincidence, my back door neighbor's father was a -- his name is Upper -- he used to be a teacher at Washington Grade School. And the minute I saw him, when they moved in, I knew he was Mr. Upper. And he always impressed me because boy, he was a hard-nosed kind of disciplinarian. And he still looked like a really a pretty hard-nosed guy when I met him back here. And, of course, that was many, many years later. But I took him to the reunion. It was kind of a surprise to everybody because they weren't aware that he was coming. And he was kind of like the, the like the "belle of the ball," everybody just really crowded around him, and he really had a great time. But his comment was that, when we, when I was driving him home, he commented on really, he made a social commentary on really how diverse that group was. And how seemingly trouble-free they were. We didn't have anybody going to jail or having, having really any huge problems with the law. And here we were, blacks, and Jews, and Japanese, and Chinese.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.