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TI: So let's talk about your school. So when you were in kindergarten, what school did you go to?

YK: Oh, I don't remember the name of the kindergarten. I got a picture of it, but it was on the west end of the Ross Island Bridge. The building's still there. [Sneezes] Excuse me. Building's still there, but the kindergarten, I think, I don't remember. I think they disbanded it shortly after we went there. And there again, we're about the same age group, about three years, and I think there were fourteen of us, we have a group picture.

TI: And how many of your classmates were Japanese?

YK: All of 'em.

TI: Was it a Japanese kindergarten?

YK: [Nods].

TI: Okay, so it was... so tell me about that. So of your kindergarten classmates, how many of them were able to speak English at this point?

YK: All of 'em did, I think. Seems to me we all spoke English while we were at kindergarten. I think that's what it was.

TI: Yeah, because it was interesting, Seattle, a lot of times at kindergarten, kids would come in speaking Japanese because that's what their parents would speak, and kindergarten was kind of the first time where they really had to learn English and use it.

YK: Once in a while it would be mixed, but mostly it's English. Because the teacher spoke English. She was a, I guess she was a Nisei, but she spoke English.

TI: So an older Nisei. And who ran the kindergarten, this Japanese kindergarten?

YK: I don't know; couldn't tell you.

TI: And do you remember what you learned at this kindergarten? I mean, was it like a typical American education or was it more there were some Japanese things?

YK: No, we just, most of it was play time, it seemed like. I don't think there was too much in the way of learning. Let's see... yeah, I remember they'd have a big toy box, I remember there would be playtime, we'd all run over to the toy box, everybody pick up their favorite toy. It's kind of interesting, 'cause everybody grabbed one, and once in a while you'd get a little conflict of one guy would try to take it away from the other. As a whole, I guess it was pretty dignified. I don't remember too much about kindergarten.

TI: Now in your class, was it both boys and girls?

YK: Yeah. I think there were more girls than boys. I think... it seems to me there's only about two of us, three of us still alive from that group. That age group were to be two above and two below. I guess it's about a year and a half, about three or four year span of kids. I don't know where some of the others went, but the ones we know of, there were only two others left.

TI: That's interesting. So after this school, where did you go?

YK: Couch.

TI: Coach?

YK: Couch, C-O-U-C-H. It's a grade school.

TI: And how large was your class when you went there? Before you said you had about fourteen before, was it bigger?

YK: Yeah. Must have been probably in the twenties.

TI: And how about the racial makeup of your class? Was it mostly Japanese?

YK: No, they were all Caucasians. And there were two or three Japanese, same amount of Chinese, that's about it. There were no blacks, that's what I can remember.

TI: And so where did all your classmates from the Japanese school, did they go to the same school, or did they all go to different schools?

YK: They went to... you mean the ones that were going to Japanese school?

TI: Yeah. Well, earlier, the kindergarten where you said you had fourteen classmates, what schools did they go to?

YK: Generally they went to either Couch, Shattuck, or Atkinson. Atkinson closed down after 1935 or so. And then those that went to Atkinson, they split to either Shattuck or to Couch. But most of them... very few Japanese were outside the Japantown area. The south end and north end were the biggest concentration. On the south end they all went to Shattuck, on the north end they all came to Couch. In the south end, there was a lot of Jews up there, they mixed in with the Japanese, I guess, get along okay. Ethnically they're pretty strong, too, you know. So I don't know what happened. But as far as I know, they must have got along. On our end, there was no special group, so it was a pretty mixed group of people. I don't think there's any concentration of any ethnic group in our end. I was... well, people, there were some Japanese that lived outside the Japantown, and they were in the Caucasian group, they got along okay. It seemed like we didn't have any real problems.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2013 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.