<Begin Segment 6>

MK: How old were you when you started to go to school?

RM: I was a "latter half" child as they had two school years starting in June and also in December. Children who were born before June went first. I was born in October and started when I was eight. I was actually seven, I think, as we counted birth years by adding one year at each New Year day. I started as a "latter half" child.

MK: Did boys and girls go to the same school?

RM: Yes, yes. We went to the same school together.

MK: Was that an elementary School?

RM: Yes, that is what it was called.

MK: By the sixth grade?

RM: They had higher grades. They also had additional courses for us to learn how to sew. Sewing machines came to Japan for the first time when we started to learn how to sew. We were all pedaling. [Laughs] We made dusting rugs. We learned how to sew.

MK: That must have been Singer.

RM: Yes, yes. Singer. Yes.

MK: Were you wearing Western style clothing then?

RM: No, no.

MK: Kimono?

RM: We were wearing kimono, but boys were wearing some sort of pants and shirts. Girls were wearing long hakama pleated skirts over kimono to go to school.

MK: Were you wearing hakama in elementary school?

RM: Yes, yes. We all were wearing hakama. Every evening, we sprayed our hakama skirt with water, folded and placed them neatly on the floor and put futon mattress on top of it and slept on it [to keep the pleats crisp]. They looked nice in the morning when we were ready to go to school. Even as children we took care of our clothes.

MK: You didn't iron them.

RM: We didn't have irons. Everyone sprayed their skirts, arranged the pleats on the floor, put futon mattress over it to sleep on it. It was cold, and we had many layers of futon mattress. We put our skirt sandwiched in between. They were looking new in the morning. [Laughs] That what we all did. Everybody did it.

MK: Did you sleep with silk futon comforters at night?

RM: No, no. They were not silk. We had cotton comforters. I assume people in high positions were sleeping in silk comforters, but the children were sleeping in cotton filled comforters. They move a lot when they are sleeping. We also had a special cover with big sleeves to put over the top. I haven't seen them here, but we had it on the top to keep us warm.

MK: It must have been so cold in the winter when you were wearing kimono with loose sleeves.

RM: No, we were wearing kimono with tube sleeves. We had a shirt to wear underneath. That's what we bought and put on. We were not cold at all. We were skipping in the snow. [Laughs] Jumping around.

MK: Did you wear monpe pants?

RM: What?

MK: Monpe pants.

RM: No, we did not wear monpe. They came out after the war. We didn't have them. Women did not wear pants and the like.

MK: My mother did not have long underwear when she was a young child.

RM: No, we didn't. We had wrapper underwear for girls. We just had this underwear wrapped up underneath but didn't have anything else. Everybody was wearing this wrapper underneath. It was flannel in the winter. [Laughs] Wrapped around the waist.

MK: Did you wear hemp kimono in the summer? Or was it cotton?

RM: No, it was cotton. Yes. Hemp was supposed to be special. Elders would wear hemp kimono, but not children. We were wearing cotton kimono, yes.

MK: Young women...

RM: Yes.

MK: ...were wearing silk kimono?

RM: When they dressed up to go out. They were wearing cotton kimono at home.

MK: Did you go to preschool?

RM: We didn't have preschools in the area. I started with elementary school.

MK: What grade did it go up to?

RM: I think we were required to go to school through sixth grade. Then there was upper elementary school for another two years. We needed to pay tuition for that. We had a school for girls after that. My family sent my elder sister to a higher school, but they said we had many daughters and should not send all of us to upper schools. I was in a tricky situation. I just went to the upper elementary school. My sister is five years younger than I am, and all the girls got to go to a girls' school by the time she was ready to go to school. It was a different era.

MK: So you went to elementary and upper elementary school, a total of eight years?

RM: Yes, yes, yes.

MK: Did you sing the graduation song at the ceremony?

RM: Yes, we sang that song.

MK: And the firefly song...

RM: Yes? That was the song for the remaining students to sing. They sang it. Yes.

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