Growing up in segregated schools

Growing up in segregated schools Feeling prejudice while looking for jobs Joining the army Generosity of the Italians Animosity between the Hawaiians and the mainlanders Being scared during combat Never feared that he wouldn’t come back home On saving the Lost Battalion Coming home to his mother after the war Getting a PhD under the G.I. Bill Invited to teach at Harvard by his boss Feeling at peace with himself

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I grew up in a very humble background: my parents were sharecroppers farmers, our living quarters were unpainted shacks, no running water, no electricity, outhouses – which I thought was normal.

I went to about five or six elementary schools - the earliest ones which were one-room school houses. And they were socially and economically segregated. In Sacramento County, where I spent third or...where I almost flunked third grade, schools were segregated. The Caucasian students went to one school and the Asian…and as far as I can remember we were all Japanese—there were no Chinese, no Filipinos…black–we never even saw one.

Date: January 3, 2015
Location: California, US
Interviewer: Lily Anne Y. Welty Tamai
Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum

442nd community school segregation veteran