Densho Digital Repository - Kay Yatabe Interview (Densho ID: ddr-ajah-1-9-14)

<Begin Segment 14>

PW: This is a little bit of a transition, but when did you first care about camp?

KY: I feel like I grew up hearing about it, because if I was with my mother, and if she ran into anybody, they would always refer to camp. They were like, "What block were you on?" Everything was before camp or after camp, "When did you make this?" "Oh, I made this after, before camp or after camp." So I grew up hearing about it, but I don't have a memory of much. I placed it once I got to El Cerrito, so I think I was more understanding after I was nine or ten. And I do remember watching one of those Walter Cronkite twentieth century whatever, it was one of those Sunday evening shows, and they did one on the internment camps. And my mother is, she's standing. She's too busy to sit down and watch television, so she's standing and watching it, and she had tears in her eyes. And I do remember, I remember that. And then if you said anything, she said, oh, she had a great time.

PW: And this was in, you were in high school?

KY: No, I was about, I was ten, twelve.

PW: All right. So you graduate from El Cerrito High in 1965, and then...

KY: First in the class.

PW: First in the class.

KY: Maybe tied for first in the class. I wasn't that smart. I really wasn't that smart, there were kids that were way smarter than me, and I had a hard time with Physics. There were kids way smarter, it's just that I was the one that, I studied.

PW: Well, but it got you to Berkeley.

KY: Yeah, but everyone went to Berkeley. In those days, the idea was that the top twelve, twelve-and-a-half percent of high school students could go to Berkeley. I mean, it was the state school then. And I didn't do that well on the merit, that test, my scores weren't that great. That's when I realized I wasn't that smart. Because I know the counselor was sort of surprised that I didn't do that well to become a merit scholar. I think I might have applied... I don't think I applied anyplace. I applied to Stanford, I think I was for medical school. No, I think it was just for... everyone I knew went to Berkeley.

PW: Was your family supportive of this?

KY: Oh, it was absolutely assumed, are you kidding? I mean, this was assumed from when I was young. Because my cousin Jon, who was, like, ten years older than me, he went to Berkeley. And people said, "Oh, you're going to be like Jon?" Of course. I was the first female to go to college. I mean, my cousin in Hawaii went to nursing school, so that's college. But it was just assumed.