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PW: Well, I was going to ask about all these major current events that are happening around you, too, right? So there was, of course, the Vietnam War, which you've already alluded to, but there's assassinations of the President as well as Martin Luther King, and there's the Civil Rights Movement. Were you affected, how would you be affected?

KY: Oh, yeah, I think I was. Because I remember when Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, I remember when he was shot. Who was I for then? I couldn't vote yet. That would have been '68, right? JFK was killed when I was in high school, so that was a big thing. That was the first time I saw my father cry, the only time, practically the only time. Then the draft was a really big thing. So right after... well, let me go back a little bit. When I was working as a lab technician, I got really involved in the AFSCME union. I think that since I was never, like, an activist in college, I wanted to be more involved when I was working. So I decided the AFSCME union seemed like a good thing. So I became the assistant shop steward of our building, of our lab. And I did a lot of leafletting, I went to meetings, and there were meetings, I think most of the people were probably sectarian. I think Young Socialists, Socialist Workers Party, I think a lot of the union was run by really very political people.

PW: Can you explain what AFSCME actually stands for?

KY: American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees. And they were basically the non-academic employees, so it could be lab technicians, glassware washers in our building. Janitors... I think, I don't know if janitors were in the same. But in our building it was largely glassware washers, and I kept trying to get them to come to a demonstration or do something, some activity. And my boss -- this the PhD and boss of my lab, who was a former, he was in SDS. He pointed out to me, he kindly pointed out to me that it seemed strange that here I was with a bachelor's degree, could go to graduate school, whatever, trying to organize these glassware washers who had high school education if that. And they didn't care about the issues that I was into, and really all they wanted to do was go shopping, because that's what they talked about. And he pointed out that it was kind of strange that I was trying to organize them when I was coming from a totally different place. So sort of around that time it was the draft and the lottery, and the graduate students, the male graduate students who up 'til then had student deferments because they were cancer research -- that's what we were doing in the lab was cancer research -- they were going to lose their 2-S deferment. So that time, one of my friends in the microbiology department, and the graduate student in my lab, decided to apply to medical school, so they can keep the student deferment. And somehow this crazy guy in my lab, he looked at me and he says, "And you can do that, too." And it had not occurred to me, it was like one of those lightbulb things, I said, "Oh, yeah, I could." And because it came around the same time my boss said it was weird that I was trying to organize those people, I then realized what I could do was I could go to medical school and become a doctor for these women. And in my mind, I the kind of medicine I wanted to do was always, I was going to do family practice for the urban underserved, that was sort of the terminology. So that's basically what I... I applied with that in mind, and that's what I did. Family practice was barely started, I mean, it continues the lowest prestige specialty. That's what I...

PW: Speaking of family, like I'm kind of curious what the dynamic was like for you and your parents at this point because, again, so much is happening in the world generationally.

KY: Oh, well, I don't know how much I told them. My brother, when I went home, my brother would be pro-United States government during the Vietnam War, because he spent all his time with my father. So my father was, he thinks the army is a great thing, he learned a lot being in the army. So I'd go home and they would all be saying, in support of the United States and Vietnam, and I'm doing all this antiwar stuff. So I didn't really, didn't talk much about it. What else was going on? Women's lib had barely started. My father at one point, when I was in high school, had mentioned something about I could be a doctor. But that just went, and it was just one time. And I think that... I have a feeling the family had thought my father should have been a doctor because he was smart, but he didn't do it. Yeah. So I think that when I told my parents that I was doing this, it went over well, they were good with it. But I think there was more of a reaction to the driver's license. Now, my mother never drove. Because she had this experience, her mother said that she was too scatterbrained to drive. So when she got married, my father tried to teach her to drive, but apparently gave up. I knew all this. So I turned fifteen and a half or whatever, and my brother is not far behind. Somehow you take driver's ed, but you have to get practice, right? I had the feeling that my father didn't really like taking me out to practice drive, I just picked that up. And so I never got my license. My brother, of course, immediately gets his license because Dad's taking him out driving, no problem, he gets his license. So I'm a junior or something, and... oh no, when is it? But I had to get a passport because I was going to go to Europe. And my father had to go with me to get a passport because I didn't have any ID. And then that boyfriend thought this is ridiculous. So he taught me to drive. He thought this was ridiculous that I didn't, he taught me to drive. When I got my license at some point, I was out of college, I got my license. And my mother was thrilled. I think I told her over the phone, she was really excited. And my father, maybe he just went, "Hmm." And my brother was happy, but at least my mother was. [Laughs] But like in Alameda, the only person who drove was Nellie Takeda. Nellie drove everybody everywhere, Nellie drove my grandmother and my aunt, she drove them to, she drove everyone to their medical appointments. She was the driver.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.