<Begin Segment 17>

RP: I just wanted to talk a little bit about your high school experience you had.

FH: In camp?

RP: In camp.

FH: Just a year.

RP: Just a year? And how did it...

FH: I had some wonderful teachers.

RP: Yeah, let's talk about Mrs. --

FH: Louie Frizzell was my choir teacher. There was a Goldberg. What was her first name? Do you remember?

RP: Janet.

FH: I don't remember that.

RP: Remember Janet?

FH: Might've been Janet, yeah. She was an outstanding woman. Wasn't there a Miss White, Mrs. White? Cooking teacher, or economics teacher. Who was another one? There's another older woman. There was a... she was my English teacher. Do you remember, I can't remember her name. I could picture her, but I can't remember her name. And then there was a Nakamura that was the gym teacher, right? Those are the things I remember. I don't remember too much. I took a art class and I can't even remember the art teacher's name.

RP: What was it about Louis Frizzell that...

FH: He had charisma. He had charisma. Actually, he was maybe four or five years older than us. I don't think he was too much older than us. And then when he came back to our class reunion he, he was some guy. He was a nice guy. I mean, I looked up to him as a teacher, but he was a, alright.

RP: And he directed the choir that you sang in?

FH: Uh-huh. We did a thing that Paul Robeson sang. Do you remember? Something about the country.

RP: About America?

FH: Uh-huh, uh-huh. And he went to Russia, didn't he? He moved and...

RP: Paul Robeson?

FH: Uh-huh. He went to Russia. Mary Kageyama was in the class. Lillian Wakatsuki was in the class. There was a lot of good guys that was in the class that turned out to be... there's some Manza-Knight guys that were in our class. Do you know of Atsuko Takahashi? Have you heard that name?

RP: No.

FH: She was a singer. She sang lot of the little whatever that went on. She was in our class. It was a neat little class that we had.

RP: You performed for other events, assemblies?

FH: Yeah, we did. That's when Paul Robeson sang and, oh, Louis Frizzell was so happy. It turned out so good. He was just beaming. I could see his face beaming over. He was a good guy.

RP: He also wrote a few operettas, plays and things that...

FH: That's what I understand, yeah. And was in some movies a lot of TV I understand. Yeah, I had seen him in TV, like Westerns. I think they were doing Westerns.

RP: How about academically, did you feel challenged in, by some of these teachers that you...

FH: No, I think I just went to school. Like I said, I went to school to be, be in school. I don't think I was... I wish now that I had been challenged to that, but that's the way life was then.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.