<Begin Segment 18>

SY: So once, getting back to Mandeville 'cause it's such a fascinating place, so once you graduated from eighth grade, then what happened?

NG: Then the bus took us to Stockton and I went to Edison High School. And Edison High School went from ninth grade to tenth grade. Well, it was really six, seventh... seventh, eighth, nine, and ten was there, but we, we were on the island 'til eighth grade, so were there for ninth and tenth. Of course, I left after the tenth grade, and then kids went to Stockton High School for eleventh and twelfth.

SY: So what kind of transition was that for you, to go from living on the island with very few classmates?

NG: That's when, that's when it got real hard 'cause, I mean, I loved it, now to be in this big school and have all these different activities. And they were, who lived in town, they, the girls were playing basketball, they could go to the movies whenever they want, they were active in the Buddhist church so they could go every week. A minister, or minister's aide, came to the island once a month and in one of the little shacks he would hold a service for kids. But so I loved, that's when I started hating living on the island.

SY: That's when you became aware.

NG: I just, when my aunt, she came to visit and my aunt told my mother -- you know that she was, the night that my auntie was gonna leave back home and I was, like, crying all night 'cause I didn't want her to leave. And then my aunt said, "You know, she's really unhappy." So I think they kind of started to think about, yeah, the idea was to raise the money and move back, so they thought, yeah, I guess it's, after I graduated tenth grade they thought, yeah, probably this is a good time.

SY: Wow. Do you know if your brothers were unhappy too, or were they too young?

NG: They, I don't think they were unhappy. They didn't... you know.

SY: It was mainly you.

NG: Yeah. I was tenth grade, so they were, what, still sixth grade. They were still in the island school. They were not exposed to the high school at all, so they didn't care.

SY: So this Edison Junior -- Edison Junior High?

NG: High school, Edison High School.

SY: Oh, it's called High School, so that, it was, again, primarily Japanese American?

NG: No, it had all kinds of, I'm sure we were, we were the minority. A lot of, I don't remember. I guess a lot of... I don't remember. I don't even remember if there were any African Americans there. I think mostly Caucasian.

SY: You think they were mostly farm families?

NG: No, I don't think so. There were, there were not, there were people, non-Japanese families that lived on those other islands, because once a year we would have this pageant. Each, a music teacher would, this traveling music teacher would come to these little schools and then at the Stockton Auditorium they would have this pageant. I mean, I was like, we were just one little, like one little flower or something and we would learn this song, and I was just amazed. There were hundreds of kids and they were from all these different areas. Well, maybe some of them maybe were from the city. I'm not sure. Yeah, they were probably from the city as well.

SY: Yeah. How many, do you know how many islands there were?

NG: No. I don't know.

SY: They were probably all different sizes too.

NG: But you know, Edison was a very good school. It had a swimming pool. I learned to swim there. Almost drowned there, but... [laughs] They had a wonderful P.E. program with wonderful teachers, and we learned -- 'cause I'm really into sports -- and we did, learned tennis, we did archery, we did field hockey. Very, very organized P.E. program. And then they had the girls' athletic association, so then you took your, once I realized that then I took my gym, that last period, 'cause that's when it was all organized. They had field days and you competed on the weekends, and my dad would, an hour away and he would drive me to all these little extracurricular activities.

SY: Yeah, because really you only, I mean, if you had to take this boat back and forth...

NG: Well, I wasn't, now it was a bus.

SY: Bus.

NG: Yeah. Went to school in the bus.

SY: So how did you get from the island to the school? On a...

NG: On a bus, because by that time they had built a barge.

SY: Oh, the barge. The barge was sort of like a bridge.

NG: Yes, a bridge. We called it a barge, but it was a bridge.

SY: I'm thinking of a barge as moving, but --

NG: Yeah, no. It could move because it had to move in order to let the boats pass.

SY: So the barge, this barge or bridge, was, must've been short, not that long.

NG: Yeah, it's very short. Not, no, not long.

SY: So it was connected to land by a very, the, where you lived was connected to land, the regular...

NG: Right. Yeah.

SY: I see. And it would take him an hour. That's the, driving there?

NG: It took an hour. An hour and a half on the bus, only because he had to go pick up all the other kids from the other islands, but it was an hour by car.

SY: I see. So your dad, on certain days, would...

NG: Yeah, he'd come and pick me up. If I had, like, a club meeting. I joined the Spanish club and, boy, I joined the scholarship club, and he'd, we had meetings once a month or whatever and he'd come and pick me up.

SY: So, and your, what was your mom doing at this time?

NG: So she started, I think when my, my brother, youngest brother started school, then she went to work with all the other ladies. And they would, she was very good. I mean, I could never make a living. They were very fast, she and this, her good friend, and they, it was called piecework. You know what that means? When they get paid by what they did, so they would separate the roots of plants or whatever they did. So they got recognized very quickly and they became like the foremen of the warehouse work. So seasonal, it was always seasonal, so we would have a potato season where you'd cut the potatoes, so -- make sure that each one had an eye -- so they would plant those. And then potato season, when it's time to grade the potatoes all us kids got that first station where you took out all the rotten ones. The next person was a little better, they got to pick out the big potatoes, and then my mom and her friend, they were like the foremen, so they were at the end where everybody had already checked the potatoes, and they would just watch it go and if somebody didn't catch one they would just... [mimes discarding a potato]

SY: That was the best...

NG: Yeah, that was the best job. [Laughs]

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.