<Begin Segment 5>

LT: So let's talk more about you. You're the fourth of five children in the Akiyama family. What do you remember about being a kid growing up in Oak Grove?

SA: Not much. Before working, used to have fun. We had a neighbor boy who was about my age, we used to get into trouble together.

LT: What kinds of things would you do?

SA: Oh, we used to play with, like wintertime, go sledding, and summertime, wagon, and climb trees, bean shooters, try to get a bird off of an electric line or something. You know, I did hit one one day, and it just scared the heck out of me, the bird tumbled down, and it was on the ground a few seconds, but it flew off.

LT: Was your friend Nisei?

SA: Huh?

LT: Was your friend Nisei? Was he a Nisei, your friend?

SA: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

LT: So were most of your friends Nisei?

SA: Yeah. Of course, living in the stretch between the school and the home, two miles, I said I think there were one, two, three, four, five, about five families and just one was a Caucasian family.

LT: Okay. Well, you mentioned school. So let's talk about school in Oak Grove.

SA: Oak Grove?

LT: Yeah. When you went to school, did you speak English or Japanese? Did you speak English or Japanese?

SA: Oh, English. But the early Niseis like my cousin, Suma, she was one of the earlier ones from that area, you know, went to school. She said Grandma was saying when she was supposed to go, when the school was over, she didn't realize it. She just stayed in her seat. She didn't understand that you're supposed to leave. But the younger Niseis had no problem, because everybody was speaking English by then at home.

LT: So how did you feel about school?

SA: How did I feel about school? Oh, I thought it was fun.

LT: Could you take me through a day at school, and could we start at home, how you got ready for school, and then what your day at school was like?

SA: Oh, well, at home, we had Grandma make sandwich. And we left school, left home about, school started at nine, so we left home about seven-thirty or so, to walk to school. At school, the class started at nine, had classes... in the summertime, we used to have a recess once in the morning, once in the afternoon, go out and play baseball. But wintertime, we couldn't do much, just kind of sat around. But we used to go down to the furnace room a lot, because in the wintertime the things were wet, and we used to take our socks and shoes off, and this janitor was real nice. He put a, when it was dry, we'd go down and check it. And we used to have a play room. Seating was about, oh, where the exit sign is. We'd have a basketball hoop, and man, I could almost dunk it. [Laughs] Yeah, we used to have fun.

LT: What do you remember about the classes you took?

SA: Huh?

LT: What do you remember about the classes that you took?

SA: Class?

LT: The classes? What subjects?

SA: Oh, I don't remember the subjects. But I do remember we had to make book reports. And I used to like the Zane Grey book, like Thundering Herd. And the teacher finally said, "No more Zane Grey books. You won't get credit for it."

LT: So your class, how many were in your class?

SA: Like my eighth grade class was about nine.

LT: And how many were Nisei and how many were not?

SA: You know, I think the eighth grade class, it's about fifty-fifty, I think. Fifty Nisei, I mean, half Nisei, half Caucasian.

LT: And so were your friends, did you all play together, or did you tend to play with...

SA: Yeah, we were friends until the war.

LT: Sure, I understand that. And we'll talk about that in a while, too.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2013 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.