<Begin Segment 10>

TI: So tell me about what school was like in Berkeley.

NH: Oh, Berkeley was fine. I went to, like I said, Lincoln school. I was in second grade, went through to sixth grade, and then from there we went to junior high school, which was Willard Junior High School, and that's still the same. The buildings are different, all the buildings that I used to remember are not there anymore, they tore 'em all down and rebuilt it. The gym that was there isn't there, they tore it down and rebuilt it. And they, and then they built another one, and then over this way, they acquired more property and built a pool, and the old administration and classroom buildings, for some reason they just tore 'em all down and rebuilt them. So I guess they were not earthquake... I don't know, not earthquake-proof, but anyhow...

TI: So as you were growing up in the upper elementary and then later on in junior high school, who were some of your, your friends that you played with?

NH: Well, everybody, everybody that went to school. I was pretty friendly with everybody. Willard Junior High School was -- this is still before the war -- predominately from Caucasian people, white people, Chinese, Japanese, Asians, mostly, and some black people or African Americans. Most of the African American kids went to Burbank Junior High School. That Burbank Junior High School doesn't exist anymore, they closed it down. I don't know, they reorganize schools in Berkeley a lot.

TI: And what were, like in junior high school, what were some activities that you did? So again, after school, did you still go to Japanese school?

NH: Yeah, then I went to Japanese school, but this time I went to the Berkeley Buddhist Temple Japanese school.

TI: And how did that compare with the one in Oakland?

NH: Smaller, lots, lots smaller. We only had two classrooms, and we, I think we must have had about thirty kids, and Wanto Gakuen had about, over a hundred. And so it's just size, I think.

TI: And how about in terms of the style of how they taught Japanese? Was it pretty much the same?

NH: Pretty much the same, as far as I could tell.

TI: So let's talk about high school. Which high school did you go to?

NH: Well, then, Berkeley has only one high school, Berkeley High, and I got, that would be 1941, in the fall of '41 I entered tenth grade, and Berkeley High was ten, eleven, twelfth grades, 'cause the junior high school was seven, eight and nine, and there were three junior high schools in Berkeley at the time. And then Pearl Harbor came in December.

TI: Okay, before we get there, so when you look at your class, when you first went to Berkeley High School, how many other Japanese Americans were in your class, roughly?

NH: Oh, I have no idea how many there were, but everybody in Berkeley went through Berkeley High School, 'cause that's the only school there was. If you were in the tenth grade... well, of course, there was the Catholic school, St. Mary's, but that was the only other one.

TI: Like if you were in one of your classes, would there be one or two other Japanese Americans or none or five? What's the, I'm just trying to get a sense...

NH: Oh, there would at least be two or three, at least. It seemed like that to me. I took English, social studies -- no, social studies, yeah, French, art, and gym. That was our...

TI: And usually there would be a couple or two or three in each class?

NH: Yeah, oh yeah.

TI: And did the other Japanese Americans, did they generally, were they pretty much friends? You knew each other?

NH: Oh yeah. We knew each other from, from Willard, from the junior high school.

TI: And did most of them go to Japanese language school also?

NH: No, no. Only some did, not very many. But the people that went to our church did.

TI: So what do you think influenced some people, some Japanese Americans to go to Japanese school and others didn't?

NH: Well, I think it was the temple, the Berkeley Buddhist Temple was very strong in that the kids should learn Japanese. And the parents thought so, too, I guess, or the parents thought so, that we should learn Japanese.

TI: So it's almost like what church you went to would influence the connection to the Japanese language. So the Buddhists would tend to go to, to Japanese language school, and then the ones who, perhaps, went to Christian churches, there weren't as many.

NH: I don't think there was any such thing. They didn't have one.

TI: Like a, like a Christian, Japanese Christian church?

NH: No.

TI: Okay.

NH: Oh, they had a, there's a Methodist church and there was... well, that's the biggest one, but they didn't go, they didn't have a Japanese language school for some reason, I don't know why.

TI: Oh, okay. That's right, because you mentioned you have, the Japanese language school was at the Buddhist church, so that's, there was that connection. And so were there, like, kids who were non-Buddhist? Did they also attend that language school because their parents just wanted them to do that?

NH: Gosh, I don't think so. I think everybody that attended Japanese school came to Sunday school, too.

TI: Okay, yeah. That's, that's really interesting.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Topaz Museum. All Rights Reserved.