Densho Digital Archive
Oregon Nikkei Endowment Collection
Title: Mae Hada Interview
Narrator: Mae Hada
Interviewer: Masako Hinatsu
Location: Hillsboro, Oregon
Date: June 18, 2003
Densho ID: denshovh-hmae_2-01-0003

<Begin Segment 3>

Masako H: And what high school did you go to?

Mae H: Washington High School is not far from there, uh-huh. That's where we went.

Masako H: Did you as a child feel any prejudice while you were going to school?

Mae H: I didn't really feel that. I was a person that had friends like a few friends at a time. As I got older, I still followed that rule just making a few friends. And so the only time I felt a little prejudice was in high school, it could have been junior high, up in the junior level, and it was in an art class, and I was hurt. But that was about the only time. I don't even know what the remark was, uh-huh.

Masako H: So you had both Caucasian and Japanese friends. Can you remember any of them right now?

Mae H: I can't remember the names. In our neighborhood, we had Caucasians as well as Greek and other ethnicity. So I remember the Greek friend and visiting her home and their typical lamps. They live, a lot of lamps I recall that, and I guess you just are curious, most people are, and I was, and I enjoy doing that. And there were a few Nisei students to my high school. I remember the Takeoka family. And a neighbor of ours, the father worked in the newspaper that was published.

Masako H: Oyama.

Mae H: Uh-huh. Oyamas, I believe. And Odas, they were my, our family friends.

Masako H: Were there any teachers who really influenced your life?

Mae H: Oh, very much. In grade school, Garnet West was an art teacher in our Buckman School. We had an unusual class schedule. We were one school that was different in the fact that we were, there's a word for it where we had blocked schedules for different interests. Like a nature study, we had once a week. We had music once a week and art once a week and drama too. I really felt enriched later when I found out that I was privileged to have all that.

[Interruption]

Masako H: So as a teenager, did you date?

Mae H: No, not really, just once maybe. He took me to Tick Tock. [Laughs]

Masako H: What did you do for recreation or entertainment?

Mae H: We didn't see too many movies, but we did see some. And I remember, I must have seen it or else they talked about it so much, the first motion picture sound was the Al Jolson's picture. I think that was the one that I remember too. But I did enjoy the movies, and so, and tennis with my friends and...

Masako H: Where did you play tennis?

Mae H: At the Benson courts. It was only about three or four blocks away north of where I lived. I lived between Ankeny and Burnside on Fifteenth Street.

Masako H: You went to Washington High School, graduated from there. What did you do after you graduated?

Mae H: Well, I had taken a college prep course, and I wanted to go to college. But my father said it wasn't possible at that moment or that year. And so I thought, well, I want to keep busy learning something, so I went to a vocational school, and that's where I got the classes my mother never taught me, cooking, sewing. I continued with art. I took every art class I could, they had. And so I enjoyed that because I just transferred my solid credits. I have the distinction of two high school diplomas, oh yuck. [Laughs]

Masako H: So that was called Girls' Polytechnic?

Mae H: That's right.

Masako H: What did you do after you finished at Girls' Polytechnic?

Mae H: I think the war broke out, yes, just about, just before I would get that diploma. All my teachers says, "Finish your projects, and we will give you your diploma," and that's how it happened. In 1941, I would have graduated from that two-year course that spring, I think, but, so that would have been 1942. The war broke out in '41. That's right, so I would have received that in 1942.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.