<Begin Segment 21>

SY: And so you rented them for a while and then you found, your mom and dad bought a house very close by.

NG: Yeah. It's in Mission Hills, so it's close to Pacoima, yeah.

SY: And that's where you started going to school again.

NG: Right, then I went, when I was... yeah, they were in Pacoima, so San Fernando was, it would've made no difference. My grandmother's place where she was renting or my new house, it was still San Fernando High School that I went to.

SY: And what kind of, what kind of transition was that, going from...

NG: Eleventh grade, okay, so right away there're Japanese kids there that, well, my cousin was going there, so I already felt comfortable. I mean, I knew my cousin and she introduced me to her friends. And like I said, Edison High School was really a good school when I think about it, but I didn't realize that the, until later, that they tracked you, so of course they were all like, all the students were like me. I didn't know there were other students until I took this, this foods class. Everybody had to take a home economics class, and I was with this girl who couldn't read the recipe. I didn't, 'cause we're all doing, taking algebra and whatever. Anyways, I go to San Fernando, so my first -- I got, they placed me in a Spanish One class and they should've put me in a Spanish Three class, so the first day I'm in this class and I have my lunch, and I go leave my seat, desk to tell the teacher, who was older, than older -- oh my gosh -- and it was chaos. I don't remember there being chaos in Edison. Nobody was paying attention to her. So then I go to lunch and I open my lunch, and somebody switched lunches. [Laughs] So that was my first experience in San Fernando. But I made really good friends there, so I was, I had a good time, eleventh and twelfth grade.

SY: It was, was it much larger than Edison?

NG: Yeah. I think it was... but even though Edison looked big to me, so I don't know, maybe it might've been the same.

SY: You know, we didn't talk about whether or not you were in school at Tule Lake. Were you, were you in --

NG: Yes, we went to nursery school.

SY: You did go to nursery school.

NG: Yeah, 'cause I remember we had to put our little handkerchief and I remember crying one day 'cause my mom did not put my handkerchief. [Laughs]

SY: What was the handkerchief for?

NG: I don't know. We used to, I guess you had to put a little handkerchief, whatever it was, with a safety pin.

SY: So you didn't go to regular school at all?

NG: No.

SY: You were too young.

NG: Yeah, I was too young. It was a little, it was like a nursery, preschool probably.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.