<Begin Segment 2>

DG: Where did you go to grammar school?

TS: Clarksburg Elementary.

DG: And that was a segregated school? Or... was that a segregated school? Or integrated?

TS: No, well, in the old days, my father and them, he wasn't a citizen then, so he couldn't farm. They had to work for somebody, lease land from other people. So he didn't want to, he couldn't plant the same thing in the same place over and over, so we moved around quite a bit. We went from Clarksburg to Courtland, then come back to Clarksburg, another piece of ground, farm there. That's how most of 'em had to... unless they were, they had a piece of ground. But my father couldn't own the land until, he's one of those, he studied and became a citizen, later.

JS: So you went to Clarksburg Elementary, but then you also came and went to Courtland?

TS: Yeah, I was in Courtland segregated school for a while too. Yeah, and then came back.

JS: Can you talk about the difference in the two schools, or what your experience was, being in the integrated school and then being in the Oriental school?

TS: Yeah, it was all Asian people. And I thought that wasn't very good, you won't learn any. The Chinese people talked Chinese, Japanese talked Japanese. They're not gonna learn English that way. But then, we had no choice. And Clarksburg was good because they weren't segregated like that.

JS: So you Nisei students would speak Japanese to each other?

TS: No. I mean, we speak English.

JS: But you'd only talk to the other Japanese students?

TS: You mean...

DG: At the, at the Courtland Oriental school.

TS: No. The teacher stressed that. "You got to speak English." Yeah.

DG: But you made it sound as if the Chinese kids stuck together.

TS: Yeah, when they're outside, recess, they played with their own group.

JS: So there were Chinese. What other ethnic groups were at this school?

TS: It was mostly Chinese and Japanese. They didn't have no, like right now you have the Vietnamese or -- there was some Filipinos. They were Asian. I don't know, we just knew Chinese. I mean, didn't know the difference. But I don't think there was any other... like now, there's all kinds of Asian people here.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2012 Densho and Preserving California's Japantowns. All Rights Reserved.