<Begin Segment 69>

AI: You just mentioned that you were starting to write then, during your night job.

MY: Uh-huh. I was reading, and I just decided -- I remember thinking that there was a lot of activity during the day. I think what turned me off was, they were having beauty contests or something like that. And I thought it was kind of silly, they were trying to normalize -- of course -- they were trying to normalize all the activities in camp, and I just thought, well, I'm just going to get away from that and start working at night. And so I don't know if I was antisocial or what.

TY: You were.

MY: I guess so. [Laughs] So I, I had some books, I was reading a lot, and then also I was writing letters to schools. I started writing after several months for admission to, sending for admission papers and things like that. And I think, in those days, it didn't cost anything to apply to a school. Since then you, in order to apply for a college, it costs, I don't know how much. How much does it cost?

JY: Nowadays?

Jeni Y: Fifty.

JY: Fifty bucks, a hundred bucks.

MY: Yeah, whatever, whatever it is. Because I sent a lot of applications, I sent, sent for, to a lot of schools, and there was a whole list of universities and colleges in the back of the Webster's Dictionary. Hundreds, hundreds of them. So I remember sending out letters for applications.

TY: Well, didn't you have to write to people for character references?

MY: No, because I never got accepted. I was rejected from every single school.

TY: Because I was kind of surprised when I went back to the National Archives and looked at my WRA record, I noticed that there were letters in there, a recommendation that Mr. Bonham wrote for me.

MY: Uh-huh. Oh, really?

TY: Mr. Bernard, that's my English teacher in high school.

MY: For what? University of Washington?

TY: No. Just, just, "to whom it may concern."

JY: Just in case?

TY: Just a character reference. And so I was thinking -- I guess I must have been thinking of going to school, too. That was before I volunteered. So that must have been --

MY: Did you notice the date on those? The dates?

TY: Well, there's a date, obviously, but I can't remember it was. But my guess is it was sometime in --

MY: 1942.

TY: -- after, shortly after we got to Minidoka. So at that time, I was thinking of applying. But I don't remember sending any, applying for any school. But I was surprised -- I didn't even remember those letters. There must have been about five letters of character references from various people.

MY: I think that Mike must have done that, too. Because Mike was doing the same thing I was doing. But then he got very quickly accepted by the University of Cincinnati.

TY: But those letter, the files, apparently I hadn't sent them out.

MY: Oh, I see. So Mike must have, was accepted and left --

TY: So it must have, my guess is those letters were sometime in early '43.

MY: Okay, yeah.

<End Segment 69> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.