<Begin Segment 9>

TI: Okay, so let's keep going in terms of schooling. So after elementary school, the Piedmont, what school did you attend?

NH: Oh, then when all four of us were in the -- well, there were six of us in the family now, so it would be 1932, then a couple years after that it must have been, 'cause I know I was in the second grade. I finished the first grade at Piedmont Avenue School, and then during the summer, we moved to Berkeley, and I entered the fall of... how old was I? Second grade would be seven years old or eight or something like that? Seven, I guess.

TI: So about 1933, around there.

NH: '33, '34, somewhere around in there. So we moved to Berkeley, and I was in the second grade at, at that time it was called Lincoln Elementary School. It's now called Malcolm X Elementary School.

TI: So the same school?

NH: It's the same school. Imagine that.

TI: Well, it's kind of, is it, does it seem strange when you walk, when you go around the city to see the same places that you grew up with?

NH: Oh yeah, uh-huh.

TI: I would think it would be comforting just to be able to see all those things.

NH: Yeah, to see it would be... well, yes, comforting and disturbing at the same time. Why did they change it from Lincoln to Malcolm?

TI: Oh, right. So that...

NH: And I don't understand. But then if I, sometimes I go there and then, well, a long time ago I went to Lincoln school, well, Malcolm X school, and just to see who was playing in the playground, and it's all blacks, African American kids playing.

TI: And so did that pretty much happen to a lot of the neighborhoods you grew up in? That you look at when you grew up and then how it changed over time? Was there a change in, sort of, ethnicity?

NH: Yeah, I think so. Well, of course, I only, I grew up near this Malcolm X school, and I lived, I don't live very far from it now. But where I live now, it's all mixed up. There are Indian people living next door and black people living over there and Japanese people living there, and other kind of people, everybody lives on our block.

TI: So when you first moved to Berkeley in 1933, 1934, what did it look like?

NH: Oh. Our neighborhood was mostly white, some black, and Asian.

TI: And when you say "Asian," what would that be?

NH: Both Chinese and Japanese, but no Vietnamese, no... just only that. No Filipinos, just only Japanese and Chinese and African Americans, but not a lot, a few.

TI: And this was different than when you were on Piedmont where it sounds like it was mostly --

NH: Oh, yeah. In Piedmont it was all, it was all white people, and I think they were mostly Italians, for some reason that sticks to my head, but I guess it's because the kid across the street that I used to play with, his dad was Italian, and he ran the florist, so I thought all the rest of them must be the same, but it's not true. There must have been all kinds.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Topaz Museum. All Rights Reserved.