Densho Digital Archive - Jean Matsumoto Interview (denshovh-mjean-01-0004)

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KL: What was the name -- oh, go ahead.

JM: I was going to say, I had a very interesting childhood in that the Sisters of the Holy Name decided to start a school for the children of Japanese parents. And it was supposed to be a school for kindergarten, first grade, second grade, and to start the school, they needed seven students. And when they knew of my sister who was five, going on six, they came to our house and they said, "If you would send the younger sister, we could start our school immediately." And so I went to school at the age of four, and claimed to be the only one who ever flunked kindergarten, because I had to take it two years before I could go to kindergarten in order to go to first grade. But the two, the nun that was the kindergarten teacher is still at Mary's Woods, she'll be ninety-five next year, and I've been arranging little mini reunions with her for the last twenty years that I located that. The first grade, first and second grade teacher died a couple years ago at the age of ninety-three, and they, we just had so much fun with them. Of course, they wore the habits, and we were fascinated by what was under the long, black robe, and cross that clanked. And there were quite a few of us that went to that school, so there are still a few of us left in Portland, so we get together. George Nakata, Mary Jean Takashima. When... there's two from California, whenever they come to Portland, we get together with them.

KL: What were those two teachers' names?

JM: Well, one started out being the name that I thought was the most beautiful name in the world, which was Sister Mary Madelava. I thought that was just the loveliest name. And she... oh, I have to say that when, oh, and the other one was Sister Marilyn. And when we came back, we found that they had taken their original names back and were not longer... oh, this was about at least a dozen, twenty years after we came back that I connected with them again. So Sister Gertrude comes up in beige pants and the brightest red sweater, and her name is Sister Gertrude Schaeffers.

KL: What was her Catholic name?

JM: Sister Mary Madelava. And Sister Marilyn is Sister Marilyn Harris, so she was just Sister Marilyn Harris. And Sister Gertrude, whom I thought was, you know, six feet tall, was just a little bit taller than me. [Laughs] And so anyway, it was just a... and to hear them talk, they went on to teach schools all over the Northwest and after the... oh, the school started in 1938 and closed in 1942 when we all went to camp. And they used to come out to the International Livestock and had services out there for the Catholic people. But the other thing was that my parents were Buddhists, and they sent us to this Catholic school to learn English. Because as two and three and four year olds, even Alice at five probably spoke more Japanese than she did English. And so we got sent to this school to learn English. And so every Sunday my father took us to the Buddhist church. [Laughs]

KL: Did that go over okay with the school?

JM: And the nuns, it certainly didn't make any difference to the Buddhist church. And then they didn't think anything of it. Except there were certain occasions, like Easter Sunday, when my father bought us these lovely new clothes and Easter bonnets and everything, and they forgot to pick us up, because they thought we'd be going to the Buddhist church. And so my father was pretty upset over that. But it was a wonderful little school, it started out in a storefront on Second Avenue on about Ankeny, and moved into a big house by Sixteenth Avenue, close to where the cathedral is in Portland. We used to walk over to there. It was a wonderful experience, and it was all Japanese students, so it was a pretty close-knit group.

KL: How many students were there by 1942, do you think?

JM: Oh, by the time, there must have been at least thirty. And we've lost track of a lot of them, but those who came back to Portland and those we stayed in contact through camp also.

KL: Do you know anything about the Sisters of the Holy Name's history?

JM: No, nothing except that these were wonderful women, and to listen to them talk, those three or four years that they taught us were the most important in their lives. [Laughs] They just always remembered everything, they remembered those who went by their Japanese names, and they always asked them, but we've lost track of some people, because some went back to Japan. For instance, I think the consul general, her name was Miyo Oka, and I don't know what year her father was here as the consul.

KL: Was it a group from the United States, the Sisters of the Holy Name?

JM: Yeah, it's here, Marylhurst College now, and Mary's Woods, it's over in Lake Oswego area. And Mary's Woods is a beautiful place, and the nuns said, "Whatever happened to our vows of poverty?" It's beautiful. And we met Father Thielen, who was the twenty-five year old principal of our school, we went to see him when he was ninety-six, and I'll never forget that, he said, he didn't think it was going to take so long to get into heaven. [Laughs] But he died about a year later. But he remembered us. He remembered us, too, amazing. So that was really a funny experience.