<Begin Segment 13>

RP: What did you, what were your favorite subjects in school?

AS: Oh, me? I wanted, well, I was artistic and I wanted to be, I wanted to be a designer. But most of the kids, they went into math. You know how Japanese kids are. They're good in math. Except me, I'm not good at math, but I did okay. They were really, really good to me, Venice High School. They liked the, the kids were really nice. They were, most of the kids worked, helped the farm, on the farm and all that, but they were really welcomed, the teachers. They were good students, you know how they are. Just like now, they're good students. Never cause any trouble. In fact, my granddaughter, she's, we three generations went to Venice High School. She's teaching there now. She was a dean. Now she's back teaching. She teaches English, and my other grandson, brother's, teaching at Paul Revere up there. They, he's a math teacher. They were, but imagine that my sister was one of the early, I think she's one of the earliest that got a teacher's credential at UCLA; she couldn't get a job.

RP: Before the war?

AS: Yeah, so she taught at a church school. But isn't that something, though? But now they can't, they want to have Japanese math teachers. They're good at... like my kids, too, like John, too. They're my two grandchildren, my daughter's two children, they're in computer and all. They're really good. Her husband is an engineer and my daughter's a schoolteacher, but they're welcomed because look at that. He had two master's degree, but their kids really... well, one works for Google and the other one works for... I don't know, they're math... just like John and his brothers, they're all good in math. His family, my brother was really good a math. His father, I think he was, he had a photographic memory or something. He remembers figures.

RP: Did... you went to Santa Monica?

AS: Yeah, I went to Santa Monica college, uh-huh. And then when I was, then I went to L.A. College to... I wanted to be a designer, I mean artist, but I never could get in--

RP: Like a costume designer?

AS: Yes, but I, I liked it, and I didn't do what, I didn't have to make a living. [Laughs] At least my folks were there to support me. But when I was forty-two I went back to... well, my mom says, "You better help your husband put the four kids through college," so I went back and I took hairdressing. I really liked it, but my mother wanted me to go on to college, so I went on the L.A. City College and all, but... I went back when I was forty-two, so I could only work two days with my heart -- I had a heart murmur, and here I am, the longest living one. I had an operation twenty years ago. But isn't it something, though? I'm so healthy. I don't know... I told my doctor I'm living too long. [Laughs].

RP: So you had this aspiration to be a designer?

AS: Huh?

RP: You had this aspiration to be a designer.

AS: Yeah, I liked to draw figures and all.

RP: And then, and then what happened? Did you...

AS: No, I didn't. I helped at the farm and all this and that and then get married. Got a nice husband that supported me. [Laughs]

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.