<Begin Segment 4>

MH: What grade school did you go to?

EF: Troutdale grade school.

MH: And how far was it from your home?

EF: It was over a mile, mile and a half I'd say.

MH: How did you get there?

EF: We walked. We had no buses back in those days.

MH: Were your folks involved in the school?

EF: Not really, not really. My dad used to take us to, transport us to, so we can get to play baseball against the opponent once in a while, but not really. They were too busy making, trying to survive.

MH: What high school did you go to?

EF: Gresham High School.

MH: Did you feel any prejudice while you were going there?

EF: No, I never did feel that.

MH: Do you remember any of your teachers?

EF: Oh, yeah.

MH: Why?

EF: Huh?

MH: Why? Why do you remember those teachers?

EF: Well, I think if you've been there for four years you kind of got to know them quite well and the different subjects that they taught. They didn't have a lot of schoolteachers back in those days, but the ones we had were great, I thought.

MH: What kind of activities were you involved in in high school?

EF: Well, I was involved in a few sports like baseball. That was my sport anyhow, baseball. But I was also the sports writer for the school newspaper, so I got involved in the other sports also, and also got to be the sports editor for the annual book that came out every year for the graduating class.

MH: Do you still have any of those annuals?

EF: No. I think we had a fire and that was lost in that. I never was able to replace it.

MH: Did you go with the teams when they played the games?

EF: Yes. I went to the games.

MH: How was that accomplished?

EF: Well, it went pretty well as long as you were in the right, if the coach said you can go, you went. If he said you can't go, you stayed back. They didn't want you to go, and the coach was the one that usually said whether you can go or not.

MH: And you went by bus, car?

EF: We went by bus, right.

MH: When did you graduate from high school?

EF: I got caught in the, the evacuation was from 1942 and I was a senior in high school that year, so we had to evacuate before graduation, so they just gave us our diploma and said, "You graduated. Here's your diploma." This is how we got out, very simple. But we had quite a large senior group then too, I mean among the Nisei. We had a big senior group.

MH: Can you remember any of them that were, you know, Japanese Americans?

EF: I can remember a few, yes, because there's still a few that still live around here.

MH: Like who?

EF: Well, boy, you know like George Tambara for one and Tom Hijiki and Yama Tsugahiro, and his name was Takashi Tamura but everybody knew him as John Tamura and his sister Lillian was also a classmate. And people like Mary Doi, they were also in that class, Oscar Kondo, so we had quite a big class.

MH: Do you have class reunions?

EF: We used to have, yes, but it's got to the point where, we had one this year too, but I didn't attend it. I had something else that I was involved in. And I've always said, Hey fifty years is enough. So when the fifty years came up, I just dropped out.

MH: You mentioned a senior banquet. Tell me about that.

EF: Well, we had a senior banquet, but see there was a curfew of eight o'clock and the banquet started at six o'clock, so we were part of the graduating class, so we attended for two hours or less because we had to be back at home by eight o'clock.

MH: How did you feel about that?

EF: Well, we didn't like it, but, hey, we all lived with it and abided by the rules, so we didn't make any problems with it. We just said, hey, we only got so much time, and everybody accepted that.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.