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MW: And when you got to the high school, you were meeting kids who came from different parts of the island.

EH: Oh, yeah.

MW: And what was that like? Did you make new friends?

EH: Well, that's when I met Jerry Nakata, and Mits Katayama, Tom Kitayama, oh, whole bunch of them. Kato Okazaki, also, well, I used to pick strawberries for the Sakumas and also the Okazakis.

MW: So you, and this is in the summer, in summers before you got to high school so you already knew some folks in other parts of the island. And did you, tell us a little about your friendship with Jerry. I know he was your lifelong friend and the two of you were such buddies, and it's maybe hard to talk about him now since he is just deceased, but...

EH: I really liked Jerry.

MW: He was a wonderful man.

EH: He was just a super, super neat guy. And he and I were on the Boards Club together...

MW: What is the Boards Club?

EH: They took care of the stage. I think it was Clarence England, Jerry Nakata, Tom Kitayama and myself.

MW: That was quite a crew.

EH: Yeah, quite a crew.

MW: Did you get anything done?

EH: We had to.

MW: [Laughs] So did you change the sets at a play and be...

EH: Yeah, well, whenever there was any school activities, we would set up the props or open and close the curtains and do whatever had to be done to get the stage set.

MW: And did you do that all through high school?

EH: Just about. Well, not in... say we were in junior high, and actually we never did call it junior high, we're in the high school from the seventh grade.

MW: Well, it was just one building, wasn't it, the brick building that burned in the '60s, late '60s, wasn't it, that it burned, early '70s?

EH: I think so. Quite a while ago. And the one thing I liked, I liked the shop because we had Mr. Morley for that, and he was great with us guys.

MW: What kinds of things did you do in shop?

EH: Well, my first project was to make a little coffee table, and I still have that. And then I made some wrought iron stuff, and I still have that. And then Jerry and I were in Boards -- not Boards Club -- the trades class together. That was in our senior.

MW: What is the trades class?

EH: Mr. Morley, I believe in about 1938 or '39, went to the carpenter unions and got the okay to have a pre-apprentice trades class. And what we built was the manual arts building. That was torn down up at the high school. I don't know, you may remember it.

MW: Uh-huh, I do.

EH: Yeah. And there's a bronze plaque somewhere, but I think it's in the Bainbridge Island Historic Museum now, with all our names on there. But we completed that building.

MW: That's wonderful.

[Interruption]

MW: My in-laws lived in a house that was built, it probably was built by the trades class then with Mr. Morley on Manitou Beach. Would have been... I don't know when it was built, but it was about that time.

EH: The house that the Morans lived in -- and I don't know the name of the street -- but it's... oh, boy, down here, and they lived in it. And that was the house that was built two years before us.

MW: Well, it was very well-built, very sturdy and solid.

EH: Well, Mr. Morley was very, very thorough, and he was a neat guy to work for. I always loved to kibitz with him, you know, and one day we were having lunch when Norma and I were having a new house built, and Mr. Moran came in. And he was our, one of our teachers that we had in the seventh grade. And we got to talking, I was telling him about building the new house and so forth. And he left and I went on up and was making fresh coffee for the carpenters on our new house. And I hear this clunk, clunk, clunk upstairs, and I looked out and up, and the windows weren't in the place yet. And here were Mr. Morley and Mr. Moran. So we sat down there and had a cup of coffee together. And oh boy, did we reminisce.

MW: When you -- I have just a couple more questions about high school -- you were buddies with Jerry and I think you said Tom Kitayama?

EH: Tom and I were in Troop 498 of the Boy Scouts, and we met at Pleasant Beach school. And then Jerry was in Troop 497 under Mr. Foss, and I think they met in the Congregational church, Congregational church, I believe.

MW: Were you... so the different immigrant groups, you were all second generation immigrants, most of you?

EH: Yes.

MW: So the boys got together and were buddies. Did you also, was there a social mixing of the different heritages among boys and girls? Were there, like, could you, did your folks want you to date Norwegians or did they care? There wasn't any...

EH: Well, see, in my senior year, I went to work for the Port Blakely store. And I had worked there in the summers, and they needed somebody in the afternoon. So after school, then I buzzed right on down to the store and worked there for a while 'til six o'clock. I'd either have to deliver groceries or whatever had to be done.

MW: Was there any, was there any dating across the immigrant groups? I'm just trying to get a picture of the social mix at that time and how far it had progressed as far as... you know, now, it's not, there are lots of Caucasian-Japanese marriages on the island. But were there couples who dated when you were in high school? Was that allowed or not? Or, I mean, they were friends but didn't date?

EH: I don't think so. I really don't think so. Well, see, after we graduated, it wasn't long... well, see, we graduated May the 27th of '41. And December 7th came along and the Japanese people were taken away. And oh boy... that was...

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.