<Begin Segment 19>

TI: And so how about school? Where were the schools located?

NH: Oh, they had one, one block, I forget what block number that was. Was it 21, 22? No, it couldn't have been. I forget the number, but anyhow, one of the blocks, sort of in the middle of the area was the high school block, and that whole block was used for the high school. And next to it was another block which was empty. They didn't put anything there, and that was gonna be the athletic field, which it was, kind of. It was a nice football field and baseball diamond. Of course, we had to just sort of stake them out, this is where first base is and this is where home plate is. It was all just done that way. But we, in the fall of -- now, we moved from Tanforan to Topaz about -- well this, better go back even further than that. We, Pearl Harbor happened in December, evacuation of the West Coast started in April and May, somewhere around in there, March, April and May. So we were in Tanforan until, around about October, and then in October of '42, we moved to Topaz and school started in October, November.

TI: So right away.

NH: Right away, they started school right away. They say, "Okay, you kids are in the same class that you would have been if you were at home." So I promoted myself to eleventh grade. [Laughs] That was okay, I guess.

TI: Well, describe those first few weeks of school. What was that like?

NH: Oh, the first week of school was confusion. But we did get, there were lots of textbooks. English, social studies, science and math were okay. They had many textbooks, pretty much the standard textbooks that were available at that time to any school in California. We did have, there was a German class, 'cause I took German. And I don't know why they didn't have a French class, but they didn't have a French... I think it's because there wasn't a French teacher. And girls had cooking and home economics, and there was P.E. Now, the principal, the administrator, the assistant principal or dean or something, and the counselor were certified personnel. Ms. Gerard graduated from Cal and followed us to Topaz. And when, that's the only one that I know of. The other people, I don't know where they came from. They came from other places, 'cause they were certified teachers. And there must have been five or six of them, but all the other teachers were teachers like Ms. Hosoi, who was a student at Cal in math, and she was hired to teach math at Topaz.

TI: So these were older Niseis...

NH: Older Niseis.

TI: ...who were in college, or they were in college, or maybe a graduate or something, and they had them teach.

NH: Yeah, and they taught.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Topaz Museum. All Rights Reserved.