School in Internment

By Quinn Miyasaki | 7th Grade Student

What was school like in internment?

My grandma, Martha Miyasaki, was sent to the Minidoka Internment camp when she was 11 years old. She said that the teachers in internment were nice, but the school did not teach students very well. After the war, my grandma returned to a normal school, she said it took years to catch up to everyone else her age. In camp, the classrooms were dirtier and smaller versions of the ones in the outside world. Like normal schools, she had a different teacher for each class. She said that she went to a sewing class while she was in the encampment and that’s how she learned to make scarves and blankets. She was in the encampment from 6th to 8th grade.

My friend’s grandmother, Ayako Kadonaga, was sent to the Topaz Internment camp in Utah. Every day she walked to school and had no breaks for holidays like Thanksgiving, summer, or Christmas. She told me that she had friendly teachers, but that overall, her school was also bad. Her father was one of the chefs at the school and cooked food for all the students. She said that there was no privacy in the bathroom and no privacy in the showers either. There were about 15-20 students per class and because she was only 7 years old at the time, she only had one teacher. She was in the encampment from 2nd to 5th grade.