<Begin Segment 16>

[This transcript has been extensively edited by the narrator.]

SY: So, you were in high school in camp? Had you graduated from high school before you entered camp?

GN: No. Actually, May 16, 1942, was the day we were evacuated, and they did not have any school ready for us. So school wasn't ready until, oh, I think probably end of September, first part of October.

SY: Were you a senior in high school at the time?

GN: No, I was a sophomore, going to enter the tenth grade. But in the summertime, I took (woodcarving) and then I went over and I took this class with this fellow named Bob Minami. He had been a professional advertising artist.

SY: This was in camp.

GN: In camp.

SY: So this was before they actually started the school.

GN: It was the summer. And he was way up (at the north end of camp). I'd have to walk over there. He was in the top part of the camp, so I would have to go across several firebreaks and I (then) was there. We not only talked about the scenery... but he didn't have a lot of equipment, but he could get old newspapers, so he was very resourceful. He got old newspapers, they have columns, so they have lines. So he said, "Would you like to learn how to letter with a brush?" I said, "Well, I already know how to do sumi-e with a brush." He said, "This is a lettering brush, so I'll teach you everything you could learn." He said, "I do have some lettering brushes," because he'd been in advertising and brought some brushes. And there weren't that many people that wanted to take that class. So I ended up practically being his only student. I don't remember anybody else in the class. So I learned how to do all kinds of letters, Old English, all kinds of lettering. It just came second nature. That was really fun and I learned a lot about design and composition and spacing. I really became very adept at lettering. It came in handy later on because I'm always involved in some kind of protests and I'm always making some kind of protest sign or campaign signs for somebody. Then I taught in a school that didn't have very many funds, so I had to build a curriculum. So I thought, "Well, I bet the kids will like to learn how to do all this kind of exotic lettering, especially Old English. And they did. Oh, everybody wanted to take that class. So I designed a lettering and design class. I taught them design, and we didn't have to have very many materials either, just lettering brushes and black (paint) and newspaper. The kids loved that class. They signed up for that in droves. It was an elective.

SY: So this Bob Minami, was he young?

GN: He was young, yes.

SY: And he got paid to teach when you first got there?

GN: I don't know whether he was paid to teach, but he was just getting bored, I guess, and he just volunteered. He didn't have a lot of brushes and so he couldn't have had a very large class, but he had enough lettering brushes. And you could use any one of his lettering brushes. He had brought all his brushes.

SY: And so when school actually did start, when did school actually start?

GN: It wasn't in September. It was quite a bit after September, and there were no chairs or no tables. It was just the bare floor with all this dust coming up (through the cracks). And we had a study period where we'd just go to this empty room. And it was so boring. I had been in one class and it had changed to another class, and I thought, "Well, I wonder what will happen if I just sit here. I wonder if the teacher would kick me out." Because it was cold and the wind was blowing outside, I thought, "Well, I'd just as soon stay here and I'll just do my homework and whatever I have to do here sitting on the floor." Because sitting in the floor here instead of in another room. And it happened to be a shorthand class and then I got kind of interested in what he was teaching. So I went back to the barrack and I asked my aunts who had secretarial skills, "Do you think that would be a wise thing to do?" My aunt said, "Sure," because who knows? My mother's always very practical, said, "Well, if you want to go to college, I don't know how I'm going to send you to college." So she said, "You could probably get a secretarial job or maybe a part-time job, or maybe even at the college you go to you could work in the office or something. It probably wouldn't hurt to learn that. The more things you know the better equipped you'll be. You could even take notes." So I just sat there, and then I got to thinking, "Why don't I get credit for this?" So then I talked to the teacher, he said, "Well, have you learned enough just from listening that you could take the first test?" He said, "If you can pass the first test, then you can stay. You're not bothering me." So I stayed the whole semester and I took the first test and I got one of the top scores. I could transcribe 120 words a minute, and that was pretty good. I already knew how to type, I had learned that in the ninth grade at Luther Burbank junior high.

SY: So the courses that were not the basic courses, those were the ones that interested you more?

GN: Well, I took that, I took shorthand, I took an art crafts class. And there were some really talented kids in class, but we didn't have any materials to work with to speak of. But I had brought my watercolors and a little notebook, so I did quite a few pictures, watercolor paintings. And I don't know whatever happened to those pictures.

SY: So was school...

GN: But this is the thing that got me. I had to take biology. We had either teachers that were very good or the teachers that probably couldn't get jobs anyplace else. That's what I figured. This biology teacher, his wife taught geometry; she was an excellent geometry teacher. But he taught biology and he didn't believe in evolution. I came home and told my family that and my uncle who was a doctor said, "What kind of biology are you going to learn from that guy?" My (mom) said, "Oh, no, doesn't believe in evolution." "Well, just grin and bear it and read the textbook and do what you can." And then we did have textbooks, more than most of the other camps. Because Vroman's bookstore in Pasadena was also the California State depository for state textbooks. And so Vroman's made sure that all the kids in Manzanar got the state textbooks. So we had California state textbooks. (Other camp schools were not so fortunate). Now, I don't know what they did in lab classes, but I think that maybe because my friend Henry Nakano majored in chemistry at UCLA, and got probably good enough background in chemistry (in Manzanar). But me, I left in my senior year. I had accumulated so many units that I only needed less than a semester to graduate. I had to take senior English, and I only had to go to school half a day.

SY: Is that because you had taken so many extra classes?

GN: I had taken a lot of extra classes at Manzanar.

SY: So how would you rate the education that you got there?

GN: Well, I'd say that it was adequate. I had some very good teachers, and I had some... like this biology teacher (not so good). At least in California, no one would ever hire him. [Laughs] But he was a nice man.

SY: So you had teachers that were...

GN: Exceptionally fine. Like I had Helen Ely Brill. She was an exceptionally fine human being and just an outstanding English teacher. And I really learned to write, but I also had had an excellent English teacher in the ninth grade at Luther Burbank junior high, Etta Sandseth. I still remember her name. We read the Iliad and the Odyssey, and all the nuances of writing like the metaphors, I can still remember all the things. Like the (metaphor) "rosy fingered dawn," the descriptive language, I loved that. And I learned about punctuation. I learned the grammar really well. They say teachers make a big difference. Everybody can look back to a teacher that made a difference in your life. Every one of us can look back. I had some really very fine (teachers).

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.