Densho Digital Repository - Kay Yatabe Interview (Densho ID: ddr-ajah-1-9-21)

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PW: Were you working when you were in New York?

KY: Yeah. For one year I didn't work, I just took the art classes, and then I realized I went through a lot of money in one year in New York and I decided to get a job. So I got a job at the Montefiore Family Health Center. It's a similar kind of thing to San Francisco General's family practice so people kind of went back and forth. I knew some people there, because it was one of these socially responsible do-gooder family practice people, you know, progressive liberal whatever. So I worked there for a year three days a week. That's in the Bronx, so I commuted from lower Manhattan, took the train up to the Bronx. And then for two half days a week to supplement that, I got a job with the Health Department, no, Department of Education. I did school health in lower Manhattan. So that was also interesting because I went all over lower Manhattan which included Spanish Harlem, but a lot in the lower east side. And I would do school physicals or work physicals or whatever. So that was... it got me into these different neighborhoods in New York, which I probably normally wouldn't have gone into. The other reason New York was doable was because a good friend from San Francisco was a physician's assistant, she was planning on moving to the East Village, because a friend of hers had an apartment that she didn't want, she was living elsewhere, so she took that apartment. And then my roommate from medical school is from New York and so she was doing a fellowship, residency fellowship and she'd had, her two-year-old daughter at the time was my goddaughter. So I had plenty of people in New York to make it really a place to go to. And it was an interesting life, because my girlfriend, my medical school roommate, her boyfriend was, he was a photographer. He was from San Francisco, a Black photographer. So his world are all these kind of really hip Black artists. I mean... and so I could tag along and go to these things. I mean, they were really interesting. I don't know if I have the photographs here.

PW: What was his name?

KY: Jules Allen. I think they're downstairs. Here's one of his. Photography by Jules Allen. Now so my friend is now, I don't understand it, but she got into more management administrative stuff. She is now the chief medical officer of New York's health and hospitals. She has a huge job. And she's just, like, a year and a half younger than me, and she's still working.

PW: What is her name?

KY: Machelle Allen. She took Jules' name. They did get married, oh yeah, they did get married. They got married when their daughter was five. Yeah, I went to that wedding.

PW: So around this time, by the way, I'm just realizing, if you're talking '84, '85, is when redress is starting to get traction. You didn't hear anything about it?

KY: Oh, I knew about it, I just wasn't, I just wasn't... I don't know, it wasn't my world. My friends were Black, Jewish, and Irish Catholic. But I just didn't, for some reason, Wendy, my college friend, the one who was housemates here, she got me to go to the hearings in San Francisco, because she thought it was important. But she had to tell me because I just... if I mentioned it to my parents, they were, my father was not into it. And those weren't, I didn't know those people. There were a couple of times when I was in medical school, so '71, '75, when I did some things with some various collectives, some stuff in Japantown, but I just didn't fit in.

PW: What were your impressions of the CWRIC hearings, though?

KY: Not much, not much. It's a regret that I wasn't more present for that. But I thought it was fascinating, and I was perhaps more interested in who were the people interviewing from the Congress? I was not, I wasn't into it. I don't think I had that identity.