<Begin Segment 14>

TI: And so let's talk about, at the Oriental School, the teachers, were they white or Asian?

LW: No, strictly white.

TI: And at the Oriental School, it went from a kindergarten to eighth grade, is that how many grades?

LW: Yeah, from up to eighth grade then, because they didn't have no high school.

TI: And for each class, like your class, how many students were in your class?

LW: In elementary or high school?

TI: In elementary when you were...

LW: Elementary? Oh... I'd say a good twenty.

TI: And you thought maybe about seventy percent, so maybe about fifteen were Japanese and about five Chinese? Is that about the right...

LW: Yeah, something like that. And no other nationality because none of 'em...

TI: And I'm curious in terms of, if you looked at the grades, when you were like in eighth grade, like if you look at kindergarten or first grade, were they about the same number of students all the way through?

LW: Yeah, right. Yeah.

TI: So about twenty.

LW: About enough, yeah. Enough to have classroom for each grade, yeah, from first to eighth. So that many kids were going to that Oriental School.

TI: And in terms of books and supplies and education, when the Japanese eventually got to high school, were they well-prepared to, I guess, to compete academically with the white schools? I'm trying to get a sense of, was the schooling about the same or were there differences in school...

LW: Well, what happened at, during the time, it was mostly Asian people was all top honors, honors students. Well, you can't, a teacher can't discriminate that, you know.

TI: So in high school, the top honors students were all Japanese and Chinese. And even though they had to go to the Oriental School -- because I'm thinking, what I'm trying to get a sense of, when you think of the United States and the South where they had segregated schools with blacks and whites, you read about how the education was inferior at the black schools. In fact, they, they didn't want, in some cases, blacks to be able to read and write too well, because that would give them too much power, too much knowledge. So they intentionally kind of made the education worse in the black schools. And I'm just trying to get a sense of...

LW: Yeah, because in high school, white people control most of the student body. Because they might like to fill in one or two Asian in there to make it look good, but other than that, so, like the junior prom and everything like that, we didn't, I don't think we went, because, you know, it was strictly for the white people. They could afford it; they had nice garden and, you know, tuxedoes, something to wear, where the Asian people, Oriental people can't afford to go.

TI: But in terms of education, it sounds like the Oriental School did a really good job of educating.

LW: Yeah, right.

TI: Because by the time they got to high school, they did well academically.

LW: So most of the honors students are all Asian, maybe eighty percent.

TI: It's funny, it'd be interesting to have been back there as a parent. If I were, I could see a white parent, when you look at the high school graduation, and if the top students are Japanese and Chinese, you'd probably ask the question, well, is the education better at the Oriental School than the white school?

LW: Well, they had the same teacher and everything, so it's up to the students, right? Well, at least, they never caused any problems, Oriental School, you know.

TI: In thinking about the Oriental School, any memories or stories about that school that kind of stand out in terms of how it was run?

LW: No. One thing, though, we never had... see, we were eighth grade, we were the oldest ones, and we were the only ones that had a dance, graduation dance. Up to then, they never had dances like that. But that time, it was strictly pretty, everybody was bashful, anyway. If you hold hands, you were doing good. [Laughs]

TI: Yeah, we talked about that. But I'm thinking, okay, so the dance, was there interracial, sort of, dancing and dating between Chinese and Japanese when you were, when you were growing up? I'm thinking...

LW: No, we didn't hardly have any dances at all.

TI: No, but like at the eighth grade dance...

LW: Oh, that's the first one we had. But we didn't, I didn't go dance. Hardly people danced, they didn't know how to dance.

TI: But I guess what I'm trying to understand is, the relationship of the Chinese and Japanese students and how well did they get along?

LW: No, usually they stick to their own nationality, Japanese with Japanese. Not like now. Now generation, it's all mixed marriage. But before, Japanese, you married Japanese or you have a Japanese girlfriend. Chinese were the same way.

TI: Before we started the interview, you showed me a photograph, that you were a class officer in the eighth grade at the elementary school. So you were, I think, the class president. Do you remember that?

LW: I don't recall that. That's why I was surprised when I saw the picture.

TI: And do you recall, to be class president, whether or not the students voted for that or the teacher assigned it, or how they determined who the president was, the vice president?

LW: See, that's... I don't recall anything like that. But it's just the name only that I was the class president, because we never had any social stuff or anything, activities.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright (c) 2009 Densho and Preserving California's Japantowns. All Rights Reserved.