Densho Digital Archive - Kiyo Maruyama Interview (denshovh-mkiyo

<Begin Segment 5>

MN: Let me ask you about your Japanese language school experience. Do you remember from what, around what age your parents enrolled you in a Japanese language school?

KM: When the heck was it? I guess while we were still in grammar school, there used to be a pickup of a bus. It used to pick us up after school about three-thirty or so, and anyway, the name of the school was Daiichi Gakuen... four, I don't know what name it is, but anyway, it's called "Daiichi," "fourth," Gakuen. And it was, there was about maybe a hundred fifty students there from all over Glendale, and they came from maybe in the valley there like Burbank and North Hollywood.

MN: And where was Daiichi Gakuen located?

KM: It was located right on the border of Los Angeles and Glendale, sort of on the, over the fence. There was a fence around the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, and it was about a couple blocks away from that property line of the cemetery. I don't know whatever happened to the property, because nobody ever talked about why it was never reopened after the war. So I don't know, maybe it was never owned by anybody, or it was confiscated by somebody.

MN: Now, did you attend Daiichi Gakuen every day or just Saturdays?

KM: No, I used to go after school, so I used to, yeah, we have daily, or seemed like it was daily.

MN: Oh, that's right, you did tell me. The bus took you there after regular school.

[Interruption]

MN: Now, how old were you when you transferred from Daiichi Gakuen to Chuo Gakuen?

KM: Oh, it must have been about twelve, thirteen... yeah, might be about thirteen, teenager. I wasn't getting, I don't know, my mother was, I guess, was very disappointed in what was I learning Japanese, or going to Japanese school, Daiichi Gakuen, so she wanted me to enroll in Chuo Gakuen which was more of a stricter, so I used to, so she made me transfer from Daiichi over to Chuo. And I used to go there after school, too.

MN: But, now, Chuo Gakuen is in Boyle Heights?

dKM: Right.

MN: And then Daiichi Gakuen is in Little Tokyo. Wouldn't Daiichi Gakuen be closer to you?

KM: Well, I guess because she knew some teachers that were teaching at Chuo that would probably be more stricter than Daiichi Gakuen.

MN: Now can you share with us how you got to Chuo Gakuen after school?

KM: Oh, yeah. I used to ride a bicycle to the steetcar, which was about maybe a couple miles from the house. I think it was the Yellow Car, the F Car, and pick up that, I used to go to Eagle Rock from downtown, and I used to take that F Car to Yellow Car Little Tokyo and transfer over to the P Car, the streetcar that used to go to Boyle Heights. We used to use that.

MN: How long did it take you to do all this transfer?

KM: I don't know. It used to probably take me about a good hour probably.

MN: So after school you took an hour to get to Boyle Heights, then you went to Japanese school, then another hour to get home?

KM: That's right.

MN: You mentioned it was supposed to be a lot stricter. Was Chuo Gakuen a lot stricter than Daiichi Gakuen?

KM: The what?

MN: You mentioned that Chuo Gakuen was a lot stricter. Was it actually stricter?

KM: Yeah. They were a little more stricter than Daiichi. I think we had more teachers, so the classes were smaller. At Daiichi Gakuen, I think the enrollment of students in one class is too many, so you didn't get the attention that the teachers could give you.

MN: Did they make you, at Chuo Gakuen, make you memorized the Kyoiku Chokugo?

KM: What?

MN: The Kyoiku Chokugo, the Meiji education edict?

KM: [Laughs] I forgot. I don't remember.

MN: How did you feel about having to go to a Japanese language school when your hakujin friends didn't have to go to another school?

KM: No, well, they didn't even think about it, I guess. But I guess the Nisei philosophy, when your parents tell you to do something this way and that way, well, you did it. You didn't have the power to do any, make any decisions on your own, that it shouldn't be done that way or something. So if my mother told me to go to Chuo Gakuen, I went. If it was something that maybe was detrimental to my health or well-being or something like that, that I felt it was wrong, then maybe I could voice my... but all these things that she was trying to do were for the betterment of myself.