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RP: Kinge, tell us a little bit about your, your teenage years growing up in Menlo Park and attending Menlo Park High School.

KO: Well, it was elementary school in Menlo Park, downtown.

RP: What was the name of the school, do you recall?

KO: Let's see, what the heck was... I don't remember what it was. El Camino? El Camino something or other, I don't remember. But it doesn't exist anymore 'cause it's... it's just to the north of the main part of town. They have that, I guess, one block north of the Main Street in town, and then there was a little longer block, and it was just to the north end of that block. There was a school going from the, what is now the El Camino to the railroad track, one big lot, that school, and that was the only elementary school around there. And there was a couple of small ones way off to, towards Palo Alto, towards the Stanford side of Palo Alto. Some of the kids went there, but I think those were lower grades or something like that. But this was the regular K, K-9 or whatever it is. Anyway, eighth grade maximum. Kindergarten to eighth grade.

RP: Do you have any vivid memories of your grammar school years you can share?

KO: Yeah, well, I really don't have too much memory of it. But as I schemer I was, like I say, I always schemed my way through that school. In spite of the fact that my language skills in the first two years were rather non-existent, I was able to scheme my way through that and get along, just enough to get along. And I think my fondest memory is that either the first or second, I guess it was second grade, something like that, yeah, about second grade, in arithmetic course, they taught fractions, regular fractions for the mathematics part, or the arithmetic part of the course. I happened to get sick for about a week at that time, so I missed the mathematics part and I couldn't figure out how to do the fractions. And when I got to, back to class, of course, the class had gone on and they were doing fractions. Most of the kids were doing fractions. Like kids in those days, doing fractions, it was sort of a rather "guess and by gosh" procedure anyway. So I wound up not able to do fractions, and every time the teacher would ask me how to do a sum or something like that, two fractions, of course, I couldn't do it, I didn't know how. But it didn't take me long to figure out a scheme for getting along with that one. I found that the procedure was such that the teacher would ask the class, put a problem on the board, and then pick a kid out to try to solve that problem. Like one-half plus one--half equals one or whatever it is, and stuff like that. Or one-half plus three-halves equals something. And I discovered very early in the game that there was a certain relationship between the lower denomination and numerator part that I could do. I recognized a trick. So like one-half plus three-halves would equal four halves. I didn't know what to do with the four-halves, but I could find, get the four-halves right.

So I discovered that when the teacher started going around and putting the problem on the board and then asking somebody to solve it, when nobody volunteered, she would pick somebody. So I discovered very early in the game that if I found a, she put a problem on the board that I could answer, quick as a bunny I put my hand up. And I'd get the, obviously I'd get the one-half plus three-halves equals four-halves. I didn't know what to do with the four-halves, but I'd get the four halves right. So I'd get credit for solving the problem. And I discovered also that if I did it often enough, what would happen is that when she called me, and then the next time around she put another problem on the board, she wouldn't come back to me. In other words, even if I put my hand up, even if I knew the answer and put my hand up, she wouldn't come back to me until several times down the row. So I found that if I missed a question, I could wait 'til I found a question and put my hand up, I'd get, answer the question, then I wouldn't have to worry for the next few times around. [Laughs] And this worked out pretty well. And I think it was about two grades later that I really learned how to do fractions. And that was, that was the back door rule, too. I found that the teacher, the other arithmetic problem, I guess we were doing long division at the time. Played, went through a description of how to do, regularize fractions and stuff, and four-halves became two or something like that, and we figured out how to work that one. And also, the one-third plus one-half, the teacher showed how to do that. And so I discovered, finally, after about two years being behind in that stuff, I found out how to do the fractions. 'Cause I was always good at arithmetic anyway, so that worked out pretty well. And I always used that scheme of, if I knew the answer, put my hand up, and find out, even if I don't get called, I would get credit for putting my hand up. So that worked out pretty well.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.