<Begin Segment 3>

FK: Now, when you went to, in your youth on the island, what did you do for fun, what did you do, did you play mostly with Japanese kids, or how did that work, and where did you go to school?

SO: Well, somewhere, and when I think of it, growing up on the island was a very fun time, peaceful time. I didn't have any worries. I can remember a couple of cases just lying down on my back looking at the skies and the sun and so forth, which you don't have today, but it was kind of fun growing up. And in our neighborhood was a Johnson family of, at that point that they had two, no, they had two kids who were about our ages, that is, Mas and myself, Torlef and Carl. Carl is still living, I believe. Torlef died in the war. But we grew up with them, but in a kind of interesting way in hindsight, as in for many years that we lived next to the Johnsons, I don't mean closely, but close enough, as neighbors, I think I got, was in their house once and maybe shows, again, where the Japanese, like myself, Japanese Americans maybe were reluctant to go into the house of our neighbors, Caucasian neighbors, or maybe we weren't invited. I don't know which way it goes, but I remember being in the Johnson house once. But we played outside. Now, when I say play, there are a lot of, lot of things we played back, going back to the golf course, the Johnson boys and myself, we'd get a football, toss it around, play on... that was kind of fun thing. It didn't cost us anything.

And then out of this I have a funny recollection. My mother said at one point that the neighbors, the Medallions who used to live on the edge of the golf course, that they were funny. They were different, I guess. I never could figure it out. What she meant was that they were Catholics, and obviously it was a different situation, and so we weren't encouraged to play football on Sundays in that golf course because it would then be upsetting to the, to the Caucasians who'd be observing us playing around on Sunday rather than attending Sunday school or what have you. So that they, I've forgotten my, what I was gonna mention here, but you asked about playing. We'd play on the golf course, and then later on when we got about grade school age,, I can remember playing baseball with a lot of, like Jerry Nakata and others who would then come and play a little bit of baseball. It's, that's about all the kind of activities we took part in. During the weekdays we'd have to do work, working in splitting, splitting wood, raking leaves, and it's, even to this day I'm surprised that I didn't get hurt working or what have you, sometimes getting awfully close to danger point. You know, sometimes you're raking leaves, you get too close to the edge of the bank. I had weird thoughts of that. [Laughs]

FK: So where did you go to school, then, on the island?

SO: I started at the old Lincoln grade school. It became Lincoln, I should say. And I, you mentioned earlier this get-together that we had. There were seven of us, and the other seven, one of the, Harold brought the photographs of, compiled the photographs of the whole school group, and it's kind of interesting if you look at it and realize that probably, and I'm gonna say, I didn't take head count, but I would say maybe twenty-five, thirty percent were Japanese. And that's the nature of the settlement of the Winslow area, because we, at that point, were involved with simply walking to school. Later on the grade schools were consolidated and we had kids from the north part of the island, the southern part of the island all coming together, but that didn't happen immediately, at the point that I'm at school. I can remember every single schoolteacher I had in grade school, and some of them happy moments, some of them unhappy moments.

I can remember my first grade teacher was Miss Danielson, who was a miss because at that point teachers could not be married. And a lot of funny things happened around that time, and I can remember in third grade I had a teacher by name of Thelma Westley, who was a rather buxom blonde, and I guess I was doing something that I shouldn't be doing and she scolded me and said she wanted to see me after class. At this point, remember, Lincoln School, the old school, used to be kind of interesting because they had a wooden fire escape on the outside and when Thelma Westley excused the rest of the class and kept me in, she wanted to either spank me or do something. I'm not sure what, but in the meantime, my buddies are sitting on the fire escape laughing and looking in, and so I'm, again, embarrassed again. But then there's another incident, which I think is maybe a little bit funny in a way. In the fourth grade Thelma Reed, who was, oh, I guess, again, somewhat buxom, and we would, one day our class was going to go to visit a farm because, to see what a farm looks like -- and not a Japanese farm, but the Book farm, which was down on the corner of whatever street that is now -- and we then at that point had two privies, or excuse me, not privies, but outdoor bathroom facilities, one for girls and one for boys. So like so many kids, went to the bathroom and, and before I knew it Thelma Westley, Thelma Reed came, saw me in there and grabbed me and turned me, and here I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing in the bathroom, so somewhat embarrassing, but she was that type of person. She would just simply say, okay, you kids get out, get lined up to go to the farm. But anyway, that's one of those embarrassing moments. [Laughs]

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.