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MN: And I think I'll switch over to your Kahului Grammar School days. Where was Kahului Grammar School located?

KM: At the so-called, at the Wailuku end of Kahului, right at the entrance to the Maui Pineapple cannery. The entrance today would be the end of Kaahumanu Shopping Center, and Maui Pine was located right next door to Kahului Grammar School. And Kahului Grammar School, next to it was one of the first so-called trade school. Instead of community college, at that time, it was known as trade school. I think you graduated from grammar school and instead of going to high school, you could pick up a trade and that was the first, beginning of the so-called community colleges. But at that time, I think I think it was known as trade schools. You could learn the trades, you could learn carpentry, you could learn plumbing, and you could learn to become an electrician or whatever. And that school was located between Kahului Grammar School and the Maui Pineapple cannery.

MN: And then like how big was Kahului Grammar School?

KM: My picture of my class is twenty-five, thirty. That was the eighth grade, first through the eighth grade. So you can double that by eight -- no, not eight, sixth, seventh, first grade through eighth grade.

MN: And where did the students come from? Like Kahului?

MN: All of the camp, Kahului and a lot of the town. And there were a sprinkling of small little villages along the Beach Road and out by the pier there was, I think more or less Hawaiian, not camp, there was just a sprinkling of families maybe out in that area. Kahana Pond, what we call it now.

MN: And so when you look back on your classmates, in terms of ethnicities, what do you remember?

KM: Basically, how many percent, probably eighty, eighty-five percent was AJAs. Then we had, for instance, in my eighth-grade class, if you look into the picture, there was one Filipino boy and two Hawaiian boys. There were no Chinese boys. I don't remember a Chinese classmate in grammar school. Although there were, within Kahului there were some Chinese families, but none was in my classmates. So among the girls, there were a couple of Hawaiian girls, couple of Filipino girls, but very few non-Japanese.

MN: So predominately Japanese, AJA.

KM: Uh-huh.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.