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TI: So we had mentioned Hunt High School, so just tell me about Hunt High School, and maybe the quality of education. We're going to get to it later, but I know you were an educator, and I'm just curious, when you look back at those years and the education that the Japanese Americans got in places like Minidoka, just your impressions of that education.

KO: Well, I think... first of all, I looked so forward to going to Lincoln High School when I was a boy, and finally getting there and then being taken out of there, that I had a negative attitude toward Hunt High School. So I didn't do real well in Hunt High School. I was kind of distant, disinterested in school as such. I went every day, I didn't really make any real close friends. I didn't make any real enemies, either, but I didn't make any... I sat there kind of disinterested in the whole thing. There were a few teachers that I really admired and worked hard for, but there were others who were not, I don't know where those guys came from to teach, but there were some classes that just were, I don't know, just not worth the time I sat there. And, of course, physically, the building, the school building and such, there were some classes where we did have individual desks to study at. But some classes where we sat at picnic tables and we had no textbooks, and it turned out to be one hour class of just BS. But I was especially grateful to a math teacher by the name of Hunt, Ecco Hunt, and I was interested and I thought I learned quite a bit in her algebra and geometry classes. I can't really think of too many other teachers that way.

TI: So it sounds like the education was mixed, I mean, it was pockets of good educators, but there were others with maybe not really good instruction. When you think about Minidoka, was there any time that was really hard for you? Do you recall any difficult times when you were in Minidoka?

KO: No. Although physically I had a lot of energy to play this and that, but something, I don't know, I had a finger here that started to crack and bleed, and I think that has something to do with emotion. But I bled for three years. I had to change my bandage every day for three years because it cracked and bled.

TI: And you think it was caused by emotion, and that goes back to something I was going to follow up on, kind of these three years being angry about what was going on. So you think it was that anger that...

KO: I kind of think so, and I had a break out of other things, too.

TI: That you think were based on, more, the emotional kind of reaction?

KO: Yeah, because I haven't had it since.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2014 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.