<Begin Segment 15>

TI: So we talked about the elementary school, the regular, you had to go to school during the day. How about Japanese language school?

LW: Oh, we went there after the American school for one hour, see, because it ended about four, four o'clock in the afternoon, then maybe half an hour break there, then we headed for the Japanese school, and we started there for one hour. And most of, all the Japanese community they all went to Japanese school.

TI: So pretty much most of the people at the Oriental School, they would, after a half hour break, they would all then go to the, to the...

LW: Yeah, because I know that, I think the Chinese had a Chinese school, too, probably.

TI: And describe the Japanese language school. What was that like? In an hour, what would you do? Or let's first talk about the classes. Were they similar that your grade would go into the same Japanese class? Would it be kind of by age group in terms of...

LW: Yeah, it goes by, something like, it goes to grade school, high school. You know, if you're fourth grade, you're in the fourth grade class, age-wise, you're in the same.

TI: And so it was more by age, not by your language ability, it was more age.

LW: Yeah. Then after high school, it seemed like everybody dropped out going Japanese school. Up to the eighth grade, they went to school there.

TI: And why do you think people dropped out after eighth grade?

LW: Well, I guess... I don't know, but I guess they got other things to do, maybe. Because we have to go; the parents make you go. That's the difference, I think. When they got older, I think they couldn't control, but we have to go.

TI: And how did you like going to Japanese language school?

LW: Well, just going to school, but then we didn't learn too much. [Laughs] But one thing good about everybody in the community speak Japanese, so it's easy to pick up the language. Now, like my granddaughter, they went to Japanese school, but you don't talk in Japanese at home, you're going to forget, right? So that's the difference. So anytime, I think, the only way you could do it is send them to Japan and live there for one year, they really pick up. It's amazing they could pick it up. But if you don't speak Japanese at home, how you expect kids to?

TI: So in the Japantown during the day, if you ran to the grocery store, to a bathhouse, you would talk Japanese?

LW: Everything in Japanese. Hardly talked English. So we have a, kind of a hard time when we went to high school, because strictly, grammar school wasn't that bad, you could get by.

TI: Well, but in grammar school, the teachers would talk English to you. Let me as you this: when you went to kindergarten, at that point, did you know English, or it was all Japanese?

LW: No. Fluent in English, yeah.

TI: So that was about the time where you had to start learning...

LW: That's the reason more, some of the people got a hard time keeping up the grades. So they hold you back one year when you're small, you know. So instead of kindergarten, they had... they didn't have kindergarten, they had first grade. So most of the people that live in Walnut Grove is one year behind from the other communities.

TI: Now, in the case of your parents, because they worked with Caucasians, did they speak English?

LW: Yeah, well, that's how my mother and father, broken English, they get by. I don't know how they did it, but you know how, broken English, then they get by.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright (c) 2009 Densho and Preserving California's Japantowns. All Rights Reserved.