<Begin Segment 6>

JS: So tell us about your family. You're the oldest son?

SK: I'm the oldest son, uh-huh. And I went to grammar school in Fresno, and I just played around. I'm never good at school, I mean, I played all the time. And I never studied school, never... it didn't occur to me to even study. [Laughs] But I did attend Fresno State.

JS: So you...

SK: It was rather hard. I really had a hard time with, you know, I later went to, when we went to the camp, it took about two years for me to just get settled. And then I did go to college out in the Midwest from there.

TI: Okay, Sat, we'll get to that later. Let's go back before the war, ask more questions.

JS: So you went to Lincoln School, and then you went to Edison?

SK: Yes.

JS: And then high school, right? You graduated in...

SK: From Fresno High School, 1940. Midterm graduate.

JS: And after that you went to Fresno State?

SK: Yes.

JS: Okay. They're having some graduation recognition for Nisei.

SK: Somebody noticed my name, that I attended Fresno State, they're gonna give me some sort of a...

JS: Honorary degree?

SK: Some kind of a degree, I guess.

JS: Uh-huh. Are you going to attend the ceremony?

SK: I don't know if I will or not.

JS: That's a nice honor. So what do you remember about Edison or Fresno High, those schools?

SK: Oh, since it seems to be an all-black school, but at the time, when I went to Edison, it was an all-white school. There was only one kid who was black descent in the whole school. But almost everybody, everyone on the west side went to Edison, and like I say, if you live on the other side of the track, there were other schools in town. Like for instance Armenians, they lived on the other side of the track, so they went to Roosevelt High School, which was on the east side of town. And Fresno High School was north, some of the... lot of the people that grew up in the country, which is, oh, maybe the center of town, even higher density. I mean, they had truck farming at that time. So instead of the, somebody got a fortune from some people, when Fresno was growing up. I don't know the real details anyway, so I don't want to say anything which I really don't know of.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2010 Densho and Preserving California's Japantowns. All Rights Reserved.