<Begin Segment 37>

GY: And my sister about then, my younger sister was going to UCLA and studying to become a teacher. And I talked to her, and I just kind of looked at the situation, and I thought, gee, it'd kind of be nice to be working there with school, work with kids because I thought I get along with other, by then it was probably -- kids didn't bother me. Children didn't bother me. Didn't have any real responsibilities, but I felt possibly... I guess it has something to do with being a, a Japanese person or a minority, dealing with the adult, white male, mainstream. I felt -- down here I felt this kind of thing. It was being opposed and... Some difficulty in communicating. And I thought it would be easier with kids. (Having grown up in an exclusive Japanese American community, my comfort zone in relating to white adults was relatively low. I thought, as a teacher working with children of diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds, I would be an effective teacher.)

[Interruption]

AI: So about, about 1950 or '51, you thought about switching from accounting --

GY: Yeah, this must have been close to '50 maybe, yeah. Okay. I was curious about teaching and the requirements for preparing for a credential. So I went to the education department at the University of California Berkeley and talked to someone in the office. I had no idea what it means to become a teacher or anything about education. And the manager who talked to me wasn't necessarily condescending -- he was not condescending, but he was not very open to talking and saying -- say, hey, well I could do this, you know. And I didn't have many questions because I was not familiar with the, the business. He said, "Well, George, you'll have to -- I guess about the only thing you could do is to teach, but you have to be twice as good," he said. And I thought about that and said, well, I'll take a chance anyway. What else could I do? I had no idea what I wanted to do. I said, well, I'll take a chance.

AI: When, when he said that, "You'll have to -- if you teach, you'll have to be twice as good," what did that mean to you? Why would he say such a thing?

GY: At that time, there were very few Asians or Japanese Americans in the field. And he was looking at me as a second-class citizen, I guess, being a "foreigner." Couldn't see myself in front of a classroom with white children, I guess. Maybe that's the idea, I guess, I was different. I was "foreign." He had no experience with, in the training of Japanese Americans. There were no black teachers; very few, if any, at that time, even in the big cities. I said, well, okay. I'll try that, and see what I'm... so I took some of the classes and finally received my credential after about two years because I received credit from the business school. Also got credit from being, going to Fort Snelling language school, that was kind of nice. And in September of 1952, I was ready to teach. Just prior to that, I went to different school districts to talk to the personnel manager or the personnel department of the school districts. And after the interview, they said, "Well, we'll call you back." Don't call us, we'll call you kind of a situation. Never got any responses. I was very much disappointed because all my white friends had jobs already when they graduated.

<End Segment 37> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.