Densho Digital Archive
Bainbridge Island Japanese American Community Collection
Title: Victor Takemoto Interview
Narrator: Victor Takemoto
Interviewer: Joyce Nishimura
Location: Bainbridge Island, Washington
Date: October 7, 2006
Densho ID: denshovh-tvictor-01-0007

<Begin Segment 7>

JN: So, what did you do in Manzanar? Did you work...

VT: Oh, I had to finish school.

JN: Finish school.

VT: I graduated in '45 and then the very next day I came home to Bainbridge. And, of course, my parents put me to work. But I had planned to enter the University of Washington summer school, and so I only worked for several weeks and then started summer school at U-dub.

JN: What was high school like in Manzanar?

VT: It was different in that high school was in a, classes were in a barrack, you know. We eventually had an auditorium, but I believe that we only used it for about a year after it was built. And then people started leaving, so... and then the camp closed shortly after that. But all the classes were in barracks, and they were in one area, one block. And lots of times, no chairs, you'd have to sit on the floor for a while until they got chairs. They did have some good teachers that were recruited for the school. California has a pretty good education, education system, so I was fortunate that we did stay in Manzanar and finish high school there, because I had a friend who went to Idaho and he graduated -- he was my classmate -- he graduated one whole year before I did. But he went on to the university but was unable to get in because didn't have enough credits in the proper courses, I guess. So he had to go to a special school in Seattle. It was a school called Broadway where they could take additional courses to qualify.

JN: How many people were in your school? Can you tell about... in Manzanar? How many high school students were there, about?

VT: Oh, well... I think our class had about a hundred, hundred or hundred and twenty, or something like that. So I would guess, what, four times that would be the population in the high school, roughly.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.