What was your first school like?
When
I went to school in Trident, Montana. It was a two-room school house.
The first four grades were in what they called the little room, and
then there was the big room which was the upper four. My first experience
going to school was—well, I didn't like to go to school, I liked
to be outside playing. I was a good student, but I didn't like school.
Why didn't you like school?
The
reason I didn't like school was because I liked to play. I'd rather
go fishing, and hunting, and playing. All the boys, we just liked to
wrestle, and play all these funny games that you've never heard of
like Mumbly Peg and Dock-on-a-Rock and things like that.
Were you a minority in your school?
Well,
yes and no. The Asians in school, you know, they were easy to pick
out. We were a minority because there weren't very many of us in the
little school that I went to. In grammar school, there were—I
guess that the Oiye kids were the only Asians. Of course, there were
in those days, most of the students were second generation, so we had
a lot of Italians. To me, they seemed kind of strange because of their
language, the food they ate, they ate a lot of garlic,-you could tell
when Italians came around. But we got along fine. Then, there were
the Norwegian kids, who I used to go fishing with because they were
good fishermen. I guess we had just about every ethnic group in our
little school. I think we had somewhere around 20 to 30 students in
the lower grades, Most of them were second generation of different
ethnic groups.So I guess,the answer to your question was yes, we were
easier to pick out than most of the white type children.
Were you ever picked on because you were a minority?
Oh
yeah, that's normal. It's normal amongst kids. Any time that a little
kid can find something to pick on, they'll pick on it. You have to
stand up for your rights and beat them up a few times. That kind of
goes away after a while.
Do you think that your being picked on was ever due
to your ethnicity?
Well,
I think that's a hard question because it seems to me like the little
kids, even including myself, we always picked on somebody that we could
beat, not somebody that was bigger or stronger than us. I think that
the only times that I got picked on was if somebody was trying to bully
me.
Did your ethnicity ever affect your education?
No,
we were taught to always achieve and be the best students, even though
I didn't like school,to go to school. I was a good student.
Was your high school experience much different from
your elementary school experience?
High
school, by this time, all the students that in high school were much
more mature and had out grown a lot of the grammar school type of ways
of life. I don't think that anybody looked upon anybody else as somebody
different. We were all good buddies and good friends, and as a matter
of fact, I correspond almost every day on email with one of my old
classmates, because we were good buddies.
Have you stayed in contact with your friend during
all of these past years??
No,
I think its been only going on since I got a computer. I was 65 years
old before I got a computer, sometimes I wish I hadn't have gotten
one.
Were you in the ROTC in high school?
Not
in high school. In college, yes, I was required to take ROTC because
the college that I went to was a land-grant college, Even though after
the war broke out, I became a man without a country so-to-speak because
of my classification 4C—the irony of the thing was—I still
had to take ROTC, wear the uniform, and be the drill master and captain
of the rifle team and all that. And yet, I couldn't be in any of the
military units in the United States. I couldn't take any of the graduate
type courses that they were teaching for those who had volunteered
for the navy or the army or the air corps.
What is the ROTC?
What
is the ROTC? The ROTC acronym stands for reserve officers training
corps. It was usually only associated with the army. They don't say
that, but it was army reserve officers training corps. Anybody who
had finished the ROTC course and then went into the service, even if
there wasn't a war, would become an officer.
What was a land-grant college and what was the connection
to the ROTC?
Certain
institutions, colleges, and I guess high school, I don't know. At least
in the colleges, they were considered land-grant colleges, they were
not private colleges, like SC or like your school. The government was
supporting these schools, and so in turn, the men had to take ROTC.
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