<Begin Segment 8>

TI: So Japanese school, tell me about that. What was that like?

NH: Oh, I went to Japanese school... how did I get there? I don't remember how I got there, but later on, I know I took the streetcar, and I went so far. And when I got off the streetcar at a certain place in downtown Oakland, a lady was there, some lady who was my mother's friend or something, and she picked me up to take me, walked me to the school. And when it was time to go home, we either got on a bus or else I came back on the streetcar.

TI: And so how many other students were in your class?

NH: Oh, Wanto Gakuen was very big. It was, there was a gym, and several classrooms along the side and by age, younger kids were here and so on. There must have been five or six different classrooms, and each of the classrooms must have had twenty or thirty kids in it. So what would that be? About a hundred and something kids?

TI: Over a hundred kids.

NH: Over a hundred kids, yeah. And we had a gym on the side, and the older kids -- well, the little kids get to run around, which is what I did, but the older kids would play basketball and they shoved us off the, moved us off the court and they played basketball.

TI: And how frequently would you go to school?

NH: Oh, every day.

TI: Oh, so this is after regular school?

NH: After regular school, yeah.

TI: And did you enjoy going to Japanese school?

NH: I thought, "Well, this is what I'm supposed to do, I guess I better do it." That's, I guess my whole attitude was -- and it followed me all the way even to internment -- "well, this is what I'm supposed to do, so I'll do it," and not complain about it.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Topaz Museum. All Rights Reserved.