<Begin Segment 9>

SG: Can you describe where your elementary school was like?

BO: Elementary school, well, actually, Pleasant Valley School was only a two room. That's all it was. It had all these kids in different classes, so you're supposed to be studying your own thing, but you listen to others, you know. And then you start helping the other, the higher up one. That's what I used to do, not paying attention. So even in the sixth grade, I had to stay after school. That's a, two girls start to tease me, and they used to take a pen and poke me because I'm studying too hard, then I jump and then get caught. Then they tell me that I was flirting with those girls. Then I had to stay in, no recess, no lunchtime, no nothing, stay inside all the time I'm there. And then later on, I had to stay after school after everybody's gone home, half an hour after school, then you got to walk home by myself. It was rough, but I was trying to catch that teacher. She was living in Montavilla, but she passed away, so I wanted to explain that those two girls are playing games, then I got stuck for that. I didn't tell them because if I told them that, those two girls would be in trouble, so I just took the consequence, stayed in, all the recess, all the lunch time, yeah. I'm an easy guy.

SG: How many kids were in the school?

BO: Now, you really got me, not too many though. But they did have eighth grade though, two rooms, then finally grew to a three room, Pleasant Valley. It's a nice school right now, new building.

SG: Did you enjoy going to elementary school?

BO: Oh, yeah. I had a lot of fun playing, not too much studying because Mom, Dad says why you better go to see Mrs. Gizi. She, she will help you learn like history and English. Now history, that gets me. Why should we learn history of the people that is being killed when we have lots of living people? So I didn't study history. But math, I was right on top. English wasn't so bad. But that history really got me. She made a remark one time that if my math wasn't so high, I would have to stay another year in grade school.

SG: Did you ever, you mentioned once you got in trouble, well, you didn't do anything, but were there any other times that you remember getting in trouble at school for doing something?

BO: I was a pretty good boy, you know. I did everything what the other kids did. They get in trouble, I got in trouble. Walk through the field, usually they don't, the owner don't tell on me but turn the other kids in, then he gets called by the principal not to cross the field. It's a shortcut, you know. I used to play real hard.

SG: What other things did you get in trouble for?

BO: Huh?

SG: What other things did you get in trouble for?

BO: You mean taking shortcuts through Iwamotos' berry field? Old man watching us, "Hey you kids are taking a shortcut through our berry field." It's really nice. Here we walk on and pick a berry to eat. When there is a regular row, take a walk. We used to go through that way or eat apples, grapes. And grapes were good, fill up our lunch pail. Or bakers used to make to have, make charcoals and looks like an outhouse, but then you open the outhouse, smoke smell. I remember we used to fill up, and you smelled as we go home, and I apologized that we did that. He says, "Oh, don't worry." They were just inside there laughing away. You could take all you want. They don't know to do with smelt, so they smoke them. And apples, Lipto Pastry, that was one of [inaudible] from the bakery, day old stuff, they end up dumping in a barn so they could feed to the pigs. We used to go in and, we used to go in and eat and help ourselves and eat cakes. Well, you can't do that. Or a lunch pail full of blue Concord grapes. They're good. But the lunch pail was our weapon. Every time we get in a fight, we use our lunch pail. We knock down the guys.

SG: What kind of, did your mom make your lunch for you?

BO: Yeah. We didn't have too good of, sometimes have peanut butter sandwich. We had lots of berries so she made a lot of jams. There were that many, all of a sudden, jam sandwich, jam sandwich, every day, jam sandwich. In high school, we used to always have paper bag, and we, all smash, jam sandwich. It's embarrassing but at least we survived. Everybody else had a regular lunch box and sandwiches and stuff. We had a, what is that? Kind that, in the paper sack and you sit on and smash it, brain food.

SG: No Japanese food?

BO: Very seldom. Sometimes we had sushi, was put in our lunch and then we eat. We're kind of bashful about eating Japanese food in front of the other students because they want to know what's what, good old days.

SG: The hakujin kids would, the white kids would give you a hard time for bringing Japanese --

BO: No, they didn't give a hard time. It's just that nosy. They want to know what the heck we eat. But we kind of hurry and eat and throw the rest away and then go about playing.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.