<Begin Segment 4>

JS: Can you tell us a little bit about the Gakuen, Holland Union Gakuen? What do you remember about the school?

TS: We used to go every Saturday, and then the summertime, we had to go, we only had... well, we'd call it American school we went to, until June, and then all of June, all of July, we went to Japanese school every day, five days a week, and so we only had one month vacation, which we didn't care for then. Yeah, we only got one month.

JS: So when you went to Japanese school every day, it was all day, or how long?

TS: Yeah, from nine o'clock to two or three o'clock.

JS: And who was your teacher? Do you remember?

TS: Mr. and Mrs. Osaki. The daughter still lives in Yuba City someplace. I haven't seen her for ages. And the sons, well one of 'em, the oldest son died, but -- you probably heard of Yoshito?

JS: Uh-huh.

TS: Wayne, I think they call him Wayne. He was the second son. And then the younger one was Ayako, but she lives in Yuba City. Her husband just passed away, but, but they were, Mr. and Mrs. Osaki was the teacher. Well, there was, sometimes they'd hire another teacher, and so we had three teachers sometimes. There was a lot of, sometimes there was a lot students. Like this picture [points off camera], there were a lot of students.

JS: So what was your experience like going to the Japanese school? Did you enjoy it?

TS: Yeah, kind of enjoyed it. It was just like public school. Yeah, we had graduations and, and it was just like regular school. Yeah, but it was all, strictly Japanese.

JS: Do you remember, like the speech contest or some of the other activities you did?

TS: Oh yeah, our school was pretty strict with those things. The teacher had speech contests, and they used to compete all over.

JS: So they used to compete with other schools?

TS: Yeah, well, like Sacramento had, used to have Japanese school, and so they had a speaker from there. But, like in San Francisco, our speaker would go clear out to San Francisco.

JS: So how did that work? So you would have a speech contest at your school, and then you would have representatives from your school?

TS: Well, the teacher picks, you go. Yeah, we used to hate it. We had a speech, what do you call it, everybody had to get up, you got to get used to, be able to get up in public. So we had a, not a contest, but we had a...

DG: Recital like.

TS: Yeah. Once a year we had that, and we used to hate it. You know, getting up in front of people, and...

DG: Do you remember what your speech was about? What would you write your speech about?

TS: It could be anything. Yeah, it could be anything. So some people's speech, they speak long time, some people are short.

DG: Do you remember anything you gave a speech about?

TS: No, I can't remember that. It's been a long time ago.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2012 Densho and Preserving California's Japantowns. All Rights Reserved.