Densho Digital Archive - Tommy T. Kushi Interview (denshovh-ktommy-01-0007)

<Begin Segment 7>

RP: Tommy, when you first started school in Florin grammar school, it was kind of a unique situation. You went to one of, one of the few schools in California that was officially segregated.

TK: Yeah, there was four segregated schools.

RP: Walnut Grove, Florin...

TK: Florin, Isleton and Courtland. See, Courtland, Walnut Grove and Isleton, they're in that river delta, then Florin. And I think Florin, I think... going through the book, anyway, they segregated in, started in 1923, and then our JACL got involved in 1939 and they consolidated 1939. I graduated in 1938, so a couple years after I... whatchacall, then they, the first graduation, consolidated.

RP: It was just the grammar schools that were...

TK: Yeah, just the grammar school. When you went to high school, it was all combined.

RP: What do you remember about that experience, going to a segregated school? I know you were very young, did you wonder why there were just Japanese kids around?

TK: No, at that time, we didn't pay any attention about it. You just took it for normal, you went to school. But later on, then civil rights came up. We said, "Hey, something's not right." But we didn't really think nothing of it. So we used to go to... well, of course in those days, we used to speak a lot of Japanese, broken Japanese, and the teachers didn't like it. [Laughs] "Speak English, speak English," you know. But... and we used to, our grammar school, we used to call it Florin East, that's our Japanese, and Florin West. And we used to play baseball and everything, we used to clobber 'em. [Laughs] All the, see, in those days, I guess even now, Japanese kids at that age tend to age, always age much faster. So they were good in baseball and all that. We used to clobber that Florin West.

RP: So you were --

KP: Tommy, at your segregated school, your teachers were Caucasian?

TK: Yeah. We didn't have any... those days, they didn't have any Japanese teachers. Yeah, I remember if the teachers do what they, at that time, they do it now, oh, they'd get sued.

RP: What did they, what do you mean? Punishment?

TK: Oh, I seen one guy, one teacher hit another... the kid wasn't in fifth grade, and she got a book and, pow, hit him on the back of the head. Oh, I said, if they do that now, boy, they'd get sued. But those days, if the kid did that, kid go home and tell the folks, they'd get bawling out from the folks. Say, "Why'd you do that? You deserve it." See, Japanese, they were strict about it. But I kept thinking, "God..." and that schoolteacher was kind of big.

RP: Woman or a man?

TK: Oh, a woman. We didn't have hardly any men in those days.

RP: So they were pretty heavily disciplinarian.

TK: Oh, yeah.

RP: Now, did you get into any trouble?

TK: No, I didn't get into any trouble. I saw the size of the teachers, I'm not going to argue. [Laughs]

RP: So you attended school in east Florin or west Florin?

TK: East, other side of the railroad.

RP: That's the school that's still there today?

TK: It's still there, yeah, the building's still there.

RP: We visited it last night.

TK: Oh, yeah? No, they use it for some kind of library or something.

RP: It should be an historic site.

TK: Yeah.

RP: What else do you remember about going to school at that, at that school?

TK: Not... other than that, we didn't pay too much attention. After we went to high school... well, we thought everything was normal, you know. We didn't think about civil rights then. But I was looking at, looking at my annual, and I started counting all the... well, at that time when I was a senior, let's see. Forty-eight percent was Japanese, my senior class.

RP: That was in Elk Grove?

TK: Yeah. Hundred and thirty, I counted 130 graduate. Out of that, sixty-three were Japanese. But the entire school, we had thirty-eight, thirty-eight percent was Japanese. The senior class of forty-eight, or forty-something. So when we left, my classmate, one of the classmates wrote to me and says, "There's nobody around here." Half the student body was gone. [Laughs]