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VY: So at that point in your life, had you thought very much about the incarceration of Japanese Americans and what your parents went through? It doesn't sound like they really spoke of it.

JT: No. In fact, the first time I really dwelled on it or thought about it a lot was at Cal, you know, you make friends from all over. And this one girl, we became friends and we'd say, "Where were you born?" and all that. And I told her, she couldn't believe it. She was from Missouri, and she says, "That can't be. That could not have happened. You couldn't have been born in a camp." And that's when I realized that there wasn't enough... and this is before the, this was in '61, early '60s when the Asian history programs weren't, hadn't even begun at Cal or in the universities. And so it wasn't taught. And it didn't occur to me until I started teaching that it hadn't been even mentioned until kids at Cal that I'd become friends with were so shocked. They couldn't believe it, they could not believe it.

VY: So do you think, is that when you started thinking about it more? I'm wondering when you actually started, kind of, processing what had happened.

JT: Well, then, of course, I became involved in... well, it was in the '60s, and, of course, it was right at that time where Mario Savio and the hippies. And I have to tell you that I never, I crossed the picket line. I was taking government and political science and philosophy classes, but in those days, it was 1961 and '2 and '3. Tuition was $71.50 a semester. And I know we go, gosh, I can't even buy a book for that now. But I worked my way through college. I took the bus from Alameda to Berkeley every day, and I got off on the way to work at a dime store for, like, fifty cents an hour. And on the way home I worked at a cleaner's for the same. And I had to work, and I said, "I'll be darned if I'm going to not go to my classes." So I crossed the picket line. Well, I wasn't the only one. And I never regretted that because I did it because of, for my reasons. I was working hard, and it meant a lot to me.

VY: What kind of picket line was it?

JT: Oh, Mario Savio and that day. I mean, I literally had to sharpen my elbows and get my way though there, but I did it. Even though my sympathies may lie with them, I couldn't... I just couldn't because I had to work so hard. And I think that part of that was this issue of working hard for money like I know my parents did. Mom was a house, did domestic work, too, she dusted people's homes. And our mom and grandmother did that, too, but Mommy did that, too. And we'd go with her sometimes into these homes with teacups and their little crystal this and that. Which is fine, I didn't have a chip on my shoulder, and I didn't want that stuff. But I knew that Mom, they worked hard for us, and I worked hard to get an education. And so I just decided then that I would put myself first. And I wasn't the only one, there were others, but that was in college. And then I became, I wanted to become a librarian, but I didn't get into that librarian school, graduate school. So I became a teacher, history teacher. And you know, they say, "Those who can't do..." no, "Those who can't do and those who can't teach," or something like that, Bernard Shaw, he said that. And I used to get so angry because I think teachers have to be honored for, if they want to truly help kids. Because you're imparting your values and knowledge onto the young people, and that's for future. I'm sort of a romantic thinking about young people and knowing that if we don't cultivate good young people, I don't know how to explain it. It sounds trite to say that it will happen again, but you have to know what happened so that... and I'm not just talking about the internment, but history.

I taught history, World History and United States History, and there's a lot of common themes throughout history, even today what's going on with the war. They have certain themes that you can say, yeah, that's kind of an equation almost. In fact, one time, for an assignment, we were studying the revolutionary, revolutions of the world, you know, World History, the French Revolution, follow the Roman Empire and all this stuff. And as an assignment, I asked my students to write a recipe for a revolution. This was in the '70s or late '60s, late '60s. And boy oh boy, the next day I got called down into the principal's office. I was the teacher and asking them to write a recipe for revolution. I got called in and I got, really got in trouble. But I just felt that it was a method of teaching where you have to think about, compare and think. And I thought it was a pretty good assignment, but I had to cancel it because they thought I was fomenting problems, stirring things up, but I was really trying to teach.

VY: That's too bad you had to cancel. It would have been interesting to see what the students came up with.

JT: Yeah, because there were certain things that have happened in all those events, you know. And looking back on it, maybe it was too much of a flip kind of assignment, but that's the way I taught. I taught... it was in the first person when we taught, studied history, I made them write like they were editors of newspapers and they had to write stories about what was happening just to make it a little more interesting than so-and-so happened and this and that. I needed to keep myself interested, too.

VY: Yeah. And you said that the Japanese American incarceration did not show up in the books at all, so did you try to teach it?

JT: Yes, yes, I did.

VY: And how did your student react? Were they surprised?

JT: Well, I think disbelief is exaggerating because they were, I taught ninth grade and eleventh grade. So the juniors knew more about it but the ninth graders, they were still adjusting to their hormones. So nothing I taught... it was more like just get through the day and teach them basically, some of them, just how to write their names, really. And so I did have units in that. In fact, I still have them, I looked at them. I have all my lesson plans from sixty years ago, only because I worked so hard on them, I can't part with them. But I'm going to have to.

VY: It would be kind of interesting just to look at them again and see if they're still relevant.

JT: Well, yeah, I know. I think a lot them are, but it's just that I worked so hard on them. That's why I have a clutter of papers and articles and things that meant so much to me, but I remember most of them. And having the problem that I think a lot of Sansei my age have of what to do with all this stuff. I know you asked me about my teaching, but I stopped teaching because... well, first of all, to start a family, but that was the one curveball we had, we didn't get to have our own children, or children. But what was I going to say? Oh. I stopped teaching because I was so young, the students were just like four or five years older than me and they'd come and want to tell me their problems and things, and I would get... not involved, but certain things that I felt, once I knew, I had to relate to their parents. And then the parents would tell me, "Get lost," or, "It's none of your business." And I would end up crying, and George said, "Honey, we don't need this." And so I quote/unquote "retired," but I stayed... I liked young people, so I did volunteer work after that for Girl's Club in Alameda and had a long time there, mostly teaching crafts and things, which is fun. I can't believe I did that, I don't do that anymore.

And then I became a docent at the Oakland Museum for twenty-eight years, and so that kind of kept me in the teaching and history and all that. And the American Indians, the Native Americans -- we used to call them Indian -- now it's Native Americans or there's another name, indigenous peoples, they didn't call it that when I started in '83. But there's such a rich history in California of that, and I enjoyed that for almost twenty-eight years of working with kids.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.