I started in first grade and went all the way through. In fact I met the boy who would become my future husband during first grade. We went through school together. He was always in my group but he was never a boyfriend.

When the war started he went into the maritime service. When he came back he said that I was the only girl who wasn’t married so he married me. That was the kind of relationship we had! (Laughter).

At the time I attended, Hanford high school was beautiful. It had Grecian architecture with the big white columns and the building itself was white and looked like a marble palace. They tore down that old building and the one they built in its place looks like a prison!

A lot of people were really attached to the old high school building and they were devastated when they tore it down. It was a big deal when they demolished the old high school building. People used to go and watch it. They said they had to tear down because of wasn’t earthquake-proof, but they had a terrible time tearing it down. They brought in bigger and bigger wrecking balls to tear it down. It took days to demolish the building.

I graduated from that old marble high school building in 1945. It was north of town. Because I have no sense of direction whatsoever… what happened I don’t know… something in my DNA doesn’t work. I used to navigate by a way around town by picturing where the old high school was. So when they tore down that old building I lost my sense of north. No matter where I was later in life, Japan or the Philippines, I would think: “oh, Hanford high school is that way.” I got lost a lot but I didn’t really care. The high school served as my own inner compass.

The war started when I was a freshman and handed right after I graduated. A lot of the boys had to go into the service. By the time we graduated there were only seven boys left and are graduating class. The others had all gone into the service. It was funny trying to get the prompt together. We had to import boys!

At the Start of the War, My Japanese Friends Simply Disappeared

I remember when the Japanese were moved out of here. They were sent to internment camps. I remember Pearl Harbor happened on Sunday. On Monday, we went to school and listened to President Roosevelt’s speech. A short time later the Japanese kids in our class just disappeared. They moved them out. We knew that the Japanese had bombed the Philippines and Hawaii, but those weren’t our Japanese.

There was a lot of bitterness in the school. It was a really mixed up time. I had Japanese friends. I didn’t even have time to talk with them but the rumors would fly. We thought they might get put in jail. We worried about that a lot. Even today some of those Japanese kids come to our class reunions because they would have been in our class. They don’t seem to hate us, or at least they don’t act like they hate us. I think I would hate someone if I had four years of my life ripped out.

When they rounded up the Japanese they took them first to Fresno where they had them stay at the fairgrounds. Later they move them out to a camp in the desert. Was it near Palm Springs? I can’t remember. Eventually some moved to Arkansas and Michigan and some of the families stayed there. It was sad. They didn’t have time to make arrangements for their property or anything. They lost a lot of stuff and they lost a lot of years.

How I Became One-Half of a Famous Debate Team

In high school I was in drama; I was in some plays. When I was a junior I thought I needed to take debate. In my junior year the debate teacher was also the drama instructor. She was very theatrical, very theatrical. She cried a lot if the kids didn’t do what she wanted them to do.

So she accepted me into the debate class. I had a partner, a boy, who was just as interested in debate as I was. It always seems silly to me that you had to argue both sides. I put a lot of work in to prepare arguments for one side. I couldn’t see twenty and a lot of work for both sides. We went to a debate once and Sacramento and my partner was so nervous that he went into the men’s room and threw up. So we just didn’t show up. We forfeited or place and the debate.

Miss Murray was horrified! That had never happened in all the years of her debate classes. She had never had the blazers back out because they were just too afraid to go on stage. So anyway, we became famous!

We had a lot of dances at school. But when it involved boys they had to be underclassmen, which was kind of tough on us seniors. We managed.