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JC: Kiyo, can you just continue on then? You were talking about your social acquaintances, or your friends, outside of high school. They were mostly Japanese American?

KM: Yes, because it was by my temple, my temple life on the weekends. You know when I was in high school, I was embarrassed to say that I was a Buddhist. I remember once someone said, "What is that? Don't you believe in God?" And I said, "No." And I remember that really did shut me up about being Buddhist. And it wasn't until many years later that I was able to say anything. And maybe this is why my life turned out as it did. I went to college, I didn't... talking about being Buddhist, when I was in high school, I was not a Buddhist by faith, but just by association with my social life. But when I was in college, I met Will. And Will wanted to be, go to Japan and be a Buddhist minister. And, of course, I had fallen in love with Will and that was fine. But it wasn't fine with my dad. And so when he learned that we wanted to get married, he said no because to be a minister's wife. And he said no, because a minister will always be poor and the ministers' wives will always be talked badly, and he didn't want that for his daughter. But eventually he relented and we got married. And Will and I, this is in 1962, we went to Japan, because he studied in Japan, we went to Kyoto. And talking about being prejudiced, we went to Kyoto, which is a supposedly very cultured. And Will, he spoke broken Japanese, as here. And so he spoke with a lot of colloquial jargon and Meiji-era Japanese. And so he was made fun of, of course. And then I could not speak Japanese, and I remember Will was asked, several times, "Is your wife, is she from Indonesia?" Because I was dark and I didn't dress Japanese. We have lots of experiences of prejudice against us. I think much more, we felt it much more there than we did here as being Japanese in the United States. So that was sort of an interesting thing.

JC: What did you study when you went to Berkeley?

KM: Oh, when I was in Berkeley, I wanted to go into medicine. But then, of course, as I said, I fell in love, and Will said he's going to be going to Japan after he graduates, and he went to San Francisco State. So I transferred to San Francisco State also. And I became... and I got a teaching credential, something that I really didn't want to do because I didn't want to teach. But karmically, it all turned out the way it was supposed to, I'm fine. When we went to Japan, I had two boys, my two boys were born there, very interesting. Came home and I was a minister's wife for sixty years. And I think my dad was happy that we were not so poor because I was able to work and help out with our family.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.