<Begin Segment 12>

JK: And where did you go to school when you came back?

PD: I went to, well, I went to local school here, and it's called Grant school here, and then I went to Peter Burnett, and then San Jose High School. The San Jose High School I went to was on Twenty-fourth Street. Previously, I guess the San Jose high schools that a lot of, my brother went to was on the San Jose State campus. So I was one of the first classes to graduate from that new, I guess it's the present San Jose academy, whatever they call it now.

JK: It was, it's on the grounds of where San Jose State now resides?

PD: The San Jose High School is on Twenty-fourth Street, and the older San Jose High School was on the San Jose State campus, I guess. And from there it was moved. So I went to the first opening of the new high school on Twenty-fourth Street.

JK: Coming back and going into elementary school, you were fairly young, but do you remember the, was there quite a bit of diversity at the elementary school, was there a mix of white, Japanese American and other ethnicities?

PD: Yeah, I think so. I think there were Filipinos and Mexicans. I remember other Japanese, 'cause they were still, they were still being at the, and the Buddhist Church housing at the time, 'cause I remember a lot of my friends were going to the same school.

JK: And what was it like making new friends, meeting friends' parents?

PD: Well, I think the time, the time that I grew up in the San Jose Japantown community, there was a lot of Japanese living in the area, more so than now. I don't know, we used to play football in front of the church and we played marbles out there and played, I don't know, a number of games. Kick the Can and flashlight fights and blow darts and it was just a lot of things to do, and you didn't have to ride a car to go have fun in those days. You just walk over to the church, and there was a lot of kids there all the time.

JK: And the schoolteachers, were they, were they Caucasian? Were there Japanese American schoolteachers?

PD: Well, the first... I don't... in my... I remember at my grammar school there was no Japanese... I can't remember my junior high school. But somewhere along the line, I think there were some Japanese teachers at the high school level maybe.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2004 Densho and The Japanese American Museum of San Jose. All Rights Reserved.