Densho Digital Archive - Richard M. Murakami Interview (denshovh-mrichard

<Begin Segment 11>

LP: So when did the move from Tule Lake happen to Jerome?

RM: I think it was in about July, it was after school ended, so it was about July, we moved to Jerome.

LP: And since you just reminded me of school, what are your memories of school and then Tule Lake?

RM: Sitting in bench seats and all that. I was a very bad student.

LP: Why do you say that? Seems like there's a story.

RM: You know, I guess psychoanalyzing myself, I think I was a bad student because maybe I was rebelling, really thinking about rebelling of what happened to us, and not really thinking about it, maybe I was. And I know that when I was in Jerome, I rebelled more. I tell people this story, people yell at me when I tell the story, but in Jerome, see, I like math. I was in this math class, and this teacher, he was Japanese. After class one time he called me, he made me stay. He told me, he says, "Richard, you should do better in math than you are now. You should do better in school, as well as this guy named Roy, he was brilliant, all right? He said, "You should do just as well as Roy." I said, "No, I can't." And to prove him that I was right, I didn't study. That's how rebellious I was. And the thing is, after camp, we came back and I moved to L.A., guess who was in the same high school I was? Roy. [Laughs]

LP: Was the teacher at Tule Lake Caucasian or was it someone...

RM: All the teachers I had, elementary, I was in the sixth grade, yeah, sixth grade, and it was a Caucasian.

LP: Do you remember their name by chance?

RM: I have no recollection of her name. There was only one teacher I remember in Jerome, is my music teacher, 'cause I was in love with her. [Laughs] She went to University of Cal.

LP: Was there any, the one at Tule Lake, is there a personality at all, or was it just the teacher you had?

RM: Just the teacher I had.

LP: One thing that stands out to me from, there's a video that Kristen brought to give you all, it's about Manzanar, but there's an excerpt from an oral history interview where someone's talking about being in science class and the teacher is holding up a piece of cardboard or something and saying, "Imagine this is a Bunsen burner." Do you recall any lack of supplies or any lack of anything and it just seeming really odd?

RM: No, I don't remember too much about that. See, like I say, I wonder about school in Jerome, and I used to like my music class because of the teacher. Other than that, don't remember much, except when I tell this to my friends that were in Heart Mountain, when I went to Heart Mountain, and none of my people I know that were in Heart Mountain, same classes I was. And I said, when we went to Heart Mountain, I said, "Did you know that in Heart Mountain they separated the classes based upon a person's grades or their intelligence?" He said, "No, I didn't." I says, "What class were you in? You were in, what, A Class, B Class, C Class?" "I was in a class with all C people." I said, "Oh, yes, you guys don't know that. I know that." "How do you know?" I said, "I could tell." See, one thing, I eventually became an auditor, and auditors analyze things. I still do analyze things. I said, "I know that, I could tell." "How do you know?" And I says, "Think about the guys that were in class with you guys, they're all A students. I was in the C class." So I kind of knew that then, so maybe that's all the more I didn't study. I really didn't start studying until I went to college. So that's the way it was. I guess that was my way of rebelling without really knowing it, without really knowing it.