<Begin Segment 6>

MR: What was your education in Hood River?

HY: Oh, well, all the Yasui children grew up in the town of Hood River as opposed to the valley or the county. So all of us children went from grade one through twelve and high school, except Yuka because she didn't quite finish. She was in, she was fifteen when the war came along. I was seventeen and in the last year of high school. So from grade one to twelve, I went all the way through, so did all my siblings except Yuka. In Hood River, they had no kindergarten in those days, so it was grade one through twelve.

MR: And as children in school, did you say that most Japanese Americans lived in the valley rural areas as opposed to the town?

HY: That's right.

MR: So where there many Japanese children in school?

HY: Well, in Hood River, the, well, let me give you a background of Hood River School. The town of Hood River had four different levels of school. There was a first and second grade which was called co-primary, and then the third through the sixth grade was called Park Street School. This is Hood River, the town of Hood River. Okay. Then the seventh through the ninth grade was the Hood River Junior High School. And then the senior high school was a sophomore through the senior grades, so there was four schools. Now, in some of the small areas, Pine Grove and Oak Grove, they didn't have any high schools, okay? So when these children in Oak Grove or Pine Grove became of high school age, that is the ninth grade now, this is the freshmen, they transferred by bus on the school buses to the junior high school. This is the third school, okay. And then by the time, when they finished the freshmen year, then they'd be transferred to the Hood River High School. So the Nikkei in Pine Grove and Oak Grove went to the Hood River Junior High School and then transferred to the senior high school. Now, in Odell and in Parkdale -- oh, the other exception is Dee. Dee didn't have any high school either. The other exception is that in the Hood River Valley, there was an Odell High School and there was also a Parkdale High School. So the Japanese from Parkdale and Dee, I mean, Parkdale and Odell did not come to Hood River. So there was an influx of Japanese students from Dee, Oak Grove, and Pine Grove, not from Parkdale or Odell. That's the way it worked.

MR: So in school, there weren't so many Japanese children. What were your relations with Caucasian children like?

HY: Well, yes and no on that, Margaret. In the beginning up until about the freshmen year in junior high school, there weren't very many Japanese children. In fact, when I stop to think about it, probably just the Yasui children and the Karasawa and the Nakagawa families are the only one that had any children up until the freshmen year in high school in school. So we, maybe there'd be one in each class of about twenty, twenty-five people, so we stuck out like sore thumbs, all of us, you know. And then in the beginning when my oldest brother Kay went to school, he didn't know any English, you know. He was brought up Japanese. So he had a hard time learning English, but he was very quick, and he learned very quickly. And then, but I was number eight in my family, so of course, all my older siblings spoke English. So by the time I went to school, I knew it just like a native, so, and I was very good at it. But in the beginning, it wasn't for the oldest one, and that's true of most Nisei. Now I'm talking about older Niseis. They didn't know English when they started, so they had a little bit tough time. Then the younger siblings came along, much easier. But my relationship, personal relationship with the Caucasian was okay. It was not what I'd tell outstanding, great, because I always knew that I was minority because people made it known to me that I was. I was different. This is my own subjective, personal opinion on that. I don't know how my, well, I do have a feeling that some of my own siblings feel that it wasn't like that. They were perfectly accepted. So it's an individual affair and an opinion. Mine is that I always knew, and I still know.

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