<Begin Segment 11>

SO: What was school like?

LK: School we didn't have any... I remember in one class we sat on picnic tables and that kind of thing, and then we didn't have any books. The teachers we had, a lot of them were Niseis that just went one year maybe to college or they had an interest in teaching. They were our teachers, they were our core teachers. And we had to take notes. I don't know how we got the pencils and paper. And then in this core class I remember this teacher lecturing and we took notes. And that was just about the time, this is in seventh grade, this is just about the time that they broke up Tule Lake, because they were saving that for the people that wanted to go back to Japan. So the people that didn't want to, they were put into other camps. So this girl comes the night before the test and her name, she became my best friend, Matsuye. And she said, "Oh, Lucy, could I borrow your notes for the test tomorrow?" And I said, "Oh sure," I should really study it myself, and so I showed her and then she studied my notes. And the next day we took the test and she got the highest mark and I thought, "My gosh, if they were my notes, I should have gotten the highest score." But teacher questioned her and wondered how she could have gotten the highest mark when she didn't even attend the class, but she happened to be an extremely gifted person. She's the one that taught me how to play bridge in camp because we had to pass the time somehow. And as seventh graders learning how to play bridge, I think that's pretty good. To pass the time and you could learn.

And then the other classes, I don't think they were... I remember art class and a little newspaper that we had and so forth, but surely it wasn't the best... without any of the equipment that we should have had. I know they had Home Ec, they had some sewing machines, because my girlfriend whipped up a dress, I was very impressed. But they didn't have any labs. And you can imagine high school, they didn't have any science labs or how do you learn chemistry? And then my husband was older and so really his background in high school was nil. It's a wonder he made it through... when you think about it, that the background. And then, you didn't know what was going to happen to you, so you didn't have that motivation to really study hard and so forth, at that point. My sister did because she knew she wanted to go on to college right away. And then I'm in junior high so it didn't really... I think you learn a lot of your fundamentals in grade school anyway, how to read, write and all that.

SO: So you were living in, you used to live in Portland where it didn't snow.

LK: Right, I know. And then it's cold in Idaho. I know it, it would snow and we don't have boots and we don't have a winter coat, we don't have a winter jacket. We just have a little raincoat because it rains in Portland. And they gave us a little allowance of... I can't remember what it was, a month and then we'd have to order out of the Ward's catalog or the Sears catalog, and then if they were out of stock, they didn't back order, you just lost it. So you had to gamble or else they would send a substitute, something. And I remember, I had red socks that they sent me and when I went to St. Paul, I remember vividly, I went to school and I wore my red socks 'cause that's all I had. I went to gym class and the teacher, in front of everybody, Miss Bowen was her name, she said, "Oh, we don't wear that kind of colored stockings in school." And here that was the only color that I had because we just came fresh out of camp with no clothes. And I'd always go home and told my sister, "Gosh, she really embarrassed me." So it was sort of good, because when I became a teacher, I was really sensitive to all that kind of stuff, and I hope I never embarrassed anyone or did anything like that to a student, because I could remember episodes like that, when if you don't have anything, you don't have it. You do the best you can. But we had the clothing allowance. And then, like I said, once we got food poisoning and you have to go to the bathroom outside and go to the bathroom there, and then you had to wash your clothes there and then you had to bring them back to your one room and drape a rope across the room and hang all your clothes up there. And they were not insulated and so the wind would come through, it was windy in Idaho. Then in the summer it's just hot as blazes, so we had a canal, I couldn't swim, but a lot of kids would go swimming there.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright ©2009 Densho and the Twin Cities JACL. All Rights Reserved.