<Begin Segment 2>

FK: So you went to school on the island?

SM: Yeah.

FK: Where did you go to grade school?

SM: Lincoln grade school. Right down there where the Winslow green is now. One to sixth grade when I was going there. I guess before that, it was the high school for the island, I guess.

FK: So you didn't have very far to walk then to go to school, then.

SM: Yeah.

FK: What was going to school like? Were there a lot of Nihonjin kids in your class, or what was it like?

SM: What were the classes...

FK: Yeah, what was it like going to grade school at Lincoln?

SM: What was life like?

FK: Yeah, what was it like?

SM: Oh, I don't know. I enjoyed myself anyway. I had a lot of fun as a kid. Playing around all day, and summertime it was really, really a lot of fun.

FK: What kind of things did you do for fun?

SM: Huh?

FK: What kind of things did you do for fun?

SM: Played all kinds of games, you know. To kids today, everything is kind of regulated. You got to have a league and you got to have an umpire. We used to kind of get together in the evenings there in the summer, got an old game together there in somebody's cow pasture. [Laughs] Favorite place was a little pasture right next to the old Japanese Hall. I guess you don't remember that old Japanese Hall.

FK: I do, yeah.

SM: Right there where the Olympian condominium is, right around in there.

FK: So did you play then with mostly Japanese kids or did you play with Caucasian kids, too?

SM: It was kind of half and half, you know. Yeah, I guess... well, Sunday we used to have some real big games. A lot of guys used to get together. We used to go fishing. I don't know, I really enjoyed myself when I was young there.

FK: So when you went to high school, where was high school then?

SM: What was...

FK: Where was high school?

SM: Oh, right where it is there now. All we had up there in those days was just the high school and the bus garage. It had a little annex there, I guess, one building, and that was it. I don't know what year that was, but some juvenile delinquent burned the place down, anyway. [Laughs]

FK: So what was high school like? Did you have fun in high school, or did you play any sports or anything, or what?

SM: Oh, yeah. Sure, turned out for everything. It was very, very small enrollment in those days. You turn out every day, you made the team, anyway. There's nobody around. So I played baseball and basketball and football, senior year there in football, I got hit in my knee there and probably tore a ligament. That was the end of my sports career there. We didn't have no arthroscopic surgery or anything in those days.

FK: What did you do after high school then?

SM: I worked on a farm there a couple years before evacuation. And that's about it. I graduated in '39, so '42 we were evacuated.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.