Densho Digital Archive - Yooichi Wakamiya Interview (denshovh-wyooichi-01-0012)

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RP: And how did you pass your time? You, suddenly you had a whole bunch of kids to play with.

YW: Yeah, well you know, at our age there wasn't much to do because there wasn't, there weren't anything that we can play with, so we just kind of, I guess looked at comic books and things like that, and went to school. Our school was interesting. They used the cafeteria facilities of the, that were built into the grandstand facility, and we also used the open air facilities when it was hot and we just had our classes in the stands. So if people ask me, "Where'd you go to school?" I say it's a little hard to explain. [Laughs] I spent about six months in this grammar school, part of it was in the cafeteria tables, and when it got too hot in there we went outside to the grandstands.

RP: So the grandstand grammar school.

YW: Yeah. So we just, couldn't do much writing out there, but I mean, we could do reading, so that's the kind of thing they did. And the teaching staff was, at least at my level, was comprised of a lot of the Japanese American ladies who were university students, so they just volunteered to help with our teaching. So I remember I had a couple ladies who taught us until they too were being sent off to other camps, so they said, "This is the last day we're gonna be here." They'd tell us, "Tomorrow I don't know who's gonna do this class. But we were told to leave, so we're leaving." I remember that. So these young ladies were sent off to some other camp, like Manzanar or wherever, and they pretty much had to shut down the, the schools because people started being sent off to other places, so they just said, "Let's shut this down," and they just shut it down. So my, my third grade class was in Santa Anita. [Laughs] What little I had in third grade was there. And I finished up my grammar school when I went to Rohwer, finished up the third grade and then started the fourth grade following year. So I didn't really have any interruption in grades or anything, so I went from third grade through sixth grade in camp, and then when I came out I was in the seventh grade.