<Begin Segment 6>

MR: What high school did you go to?

YK: Oh, I went to Franklin High School in southeast Portland on 50th or so, on Division.

MR: What years did you attend high school?

YK: All four years there. I graduated in 1940 from high school.

MR: And did you follow your father's wishes there and get very good grades?

YK: I tried, but I wasn't really into it, I guess. [Laughs] I'm like that to this day, it's all last minute. I knew I had to do certain things. I took French, and it was hard for me, and I finally gave it up my third year. I decided I didn't need to punish myself anymore. And so I told the French teacher, "I'm not going to take your class next year," and she says, "Mademoiselle Inazuka, that's too bad," but I don't think she really mattered much because I wasn't a star pupil then. But I just took average work classes. And I may have a scholarship program, I don't know if I ever made that even. But my sister did. I couldn't follow that.

MR: Besides basketball, what other activities did the students participate in?

YK: Well, I don't know if there's that much. Basketball, maybe softball, and in the fall, I don't think there's an awful lot. This one teacher instructed because she wanted to make something happen, I guess, so we had basketball. But other than that, I don't think we did anything else.

MR: Not socially either?

YK: I didn't. I belonged to a couple of clubs, and we'd have meetings, and then you'd maybe have a party someplace in between. But I didn't socially go with them. And I had these girls that I grew up with, and we'd get together, but pretty soon they started having boyfriends, and so that, I'd be a third walking along with them, like a wallflower walking along. But I was real good friends with them, we'd get together that way. But other than that, I didn't have a real social life in those days.

MR: Were you working in the nursery then?

YK: Yeah, I'd help a little bit. I'd get up and go straight, if I wanted to go to the movies I'd work real hard, and I'd pester my mother to go see Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies. And I can just see her, we're making cuttings or doing something out in the yard because it was so hot in the greenhouse. And I start in at Bob White Theater up the street, and it's only a nickel or a dime, and I'd say, "You know, they're showing movie tonight." And she never answered. And I said, "I'd sure like to go." [Laughs] And then I'd say, "If I work real hard, would you let me go?" And I was just sort of persistent at that point. And so my older sister and I, we'd go, she'd finally dig out twenty cents or whatever it cost. So we'd happily go up, and we'd go in the evening, it's an evening show, and then coming home we'd just run home. It was only like three, four, about five blocks. But you're not really scared, but the dark. And so we'd come home, and that would last for a while, kept me happy. And still, to this day, if I see an old Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire on TV I'll stop and I'll look at it, and I get a bang out of it. And George'll get up and leave. [Laughs]

MR: When you were in high school, what were you thinking you would do?

YK: I thought I'd teach school. I told that to my father from way back, that I'd like to teach school. And then a couple times he said, "Maybe you'd like to be a lawyer," 'cause I was pretty mouthy. [Laughs] He didn't like it, but I was very lippy to him. Between twelve, thirteen, fourteen, I just really think about it, he'd just get so angry. He didn't hit me. I think he was really tempted to, but he just said, he was just trying to control me, I think. And if I did anything that was unladylike, it would bother him. We would be in the living room, and our family would be sitting there, and my older sister played the piano very well, so we'd get together and she'd play, and maybe I'd get up and we'd all sort of dance or do little stunts, summersaults. And then once in a while I'd grab the chair by my foot and dragged it toward me, and he got so angry because that was the most unladylike thing he ever saw, and he says, "Don't ever do that again." And to this day, I can remember that he was really... I thought, "Well, what's the big deal?" I just pulled a chair toward me. But I was rather a defiant child, I think. [Laughs] And I was sort of a tomboy. My sister right above me was not like me, she was very nice, very gentle. She'd never let me get the better of her. I could never, no matter what I did, she was always ahead of me. If she knew what I was up to, she'd squelch me. But we had a lot of family, I guess, interaction at that point. Evenings we'd watch the radio, there was no TV. We'd huddle around and we'd listen to Myrt and Marge. I don't think people know about them. It's not like Fibber McGee and Molly, but we'd listen to Myrt and Marge. And then when boxing, we'd all be huddled listening to who on the boxing, it would be on, and then hear the baseball. It was just, that was what we did before we went to bed, we listened to the radio. And I could just see us all huddled around wondering who's going to win the Joe Louis fight or something. And the elections, I can still remember my dad talking about Al Smith and... I forgot who he was running against. But listened to the elections on the radio, so that was our social life.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.