Densho Digital Repository - Kay Yatabe Interview (Densho ID: ddr-ajah-1-9-12)

<Begin Segment 12>

PW: Did you ever have mentors in high school or around that age, anybody who encouraged you or supported you?

KY: Yeah, there was a couple, there was a woman from Hilo who was studying, got a PhD in botany at Berkeley when I was in school, and I thought, that's great. I mean, that was like something to aim for like a PhD in Botany. And the other important person for me was Ruth Fukuchi who currently is in J-Sei Home and kind of declining, but she was midway in age between me and my mother. And Ruth and her husband were my parents' most common social, the people they would hang out with or we would do things like go to Santa Cruz in the summer. Ruth happened to be the best friend of my cousin's girlfriend, that's the woman who painted that. And Tak worked at the Union, the gas station right next door. So that's how my parents got to know Tak, and then Binky brought Ruth over at some point. And Ruth was really important to me. She was the one who told me that I was... she told me that I was smart and cute, and blah, blah, blah. Oh, here's the other thing. During high school years, my brother would always tell me I was fat, ugly and stupid. Fat, ugly and stupid, fat, ugly and stupid, over and over again. This is in my head, over and over again, fat, ugly and stupid. And then my father would sort of agree, because I was, you know, muscular. I don't think I was fat, maybe chubby. I look at the pictures and I said... but I got the impression that I was not the way someone else would like me to be. And I did have a sense of perhaps being a disappointment to my mother because I wasn't as social as she was. I was more brain and she was like the social thing, and that all ties in with the Alameda stuff.

PW: Describe that more. Because she in her personality?

KY: Well, no. I think it was partly her personality, but okay, first when I was, when we were still living in Berkeley, we used to go to Alameda every other Saturday, we took the bus. We walked up to University, San Pablo, caught the 72 bus all the way into downtown Oakland, transferred downtown Oakland and then went to Alameda. And then Paul and I would have to go across the street to play with the Takeda kids. And the younger two Takeda kids, Susan and Carol, were my brother's and my age. And then the rest of the families, anyway, that's what we had to do. Now, I personally, what I liked to do with my time is I liked to read and draw or knit or whatever crafts I was into. But they didn't do that over there. You had to run around and play games and things. And we did this I don't know how many years. My father worked on Saturdays, so he and my grandma Yatabe would come back, well, they would drive to Alameda in the afternoon and we'd have dinner at my aunt and grandmother's place, and then we would all go home together. But I forget when... we stopped going all the time, but there were a fair number of visits going to Alameda. And then when we were teenagers, it may have only been like certain occasions, like bazaar or mochitsuki. But my brother and I, because we didn't fit in, we just didn't fit in. He was, Paul was someone who, if you didn't play the game his way, he didn't want to play. And I was really, really, really shy, I just was so shy. And the Takedas, it's a household of all these very sociable people. And especially when we got into our teen years, when there's more social activity, we just felt left out. And I think our way of dealing with it was to say, to look down on it, and Paul would kind of imitate the way the JA guys walked. Someone even tried to get me to play on a basketball team in those days, somewhere in Berkeley, and I just didn't fit in. And I tried playing basketball, I'm not athletic. And the other thing was, it was the days of ratted hair. My hair never stayed ratted, so it was... it was a lot. I just didn't fit. So all those teen years, I could have met Ned in those years, because he was at the house. I mean, a lot of people hung out at the Takeda house.

PW: Ned Isokawa?

KY: Uh-huh, yeah, yeah. He was friends with Kent. And I just didn't, you didn't fit in. And I think even this friend Ruth once told me that Nellie told her that she felt sorry for my mother because my brother and I were so, whatever word she used, we were so socially awkward and socially out of it. So my mother would have loved it if I was like one of those sorority types, I think she would have loved it. It seemed like she would have, and I wasn't that.