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MY: So we had gone on to New York University, I guess. And then I got married and... let me see, then I was in University of Chicago and the HUAC there -- it was kind of interesting because the administration did refuse, unlike NYU, I was really quite impressed with this at University of Chicago, the university president who was at that time Robert Hutchins, but he didn't stay very long, in 1945 I think he left, that, the first year I was there, so I didn't really know him, to get to know him as a president. Well, how does one get to know a president of a university? [Laughs] But he wasn't there very long, but I remember that his influence on the administration was quite strong, because Joseph McCarthy fingered, as they used to call them at that time, another professor at University of Chicago, and the administrators at University of Chicago refused to fire him. And I thought hmm, that's, that was really impressive. Because I just didn't know anybody who had the courage, the guts to defy, you know, the House Un-American Activities Committee. Everybody was just shaking in their boots at that time, and they were quite powerful. Until Eisenhower came into office, I guess.

AI: Can you say a little bit more about that, for people who don't know about that era, and when you say "shaking in their boots" and that the committee was quite --

MY: Well, McCarthy, Joseph McCarthy, you know the thing about Joseph McCarthy was he was such a foolish man. But everyone was scared of him because he had power, you know, he was a congressman and he -- it kind of works in poisoning the well, that everybody thinks that he was quite reprehensible. I don't think there were very many people who really liked him as a person. His tactics were reprehensible in the way that, and then he without any basis in fact would charge a person with being a Communist. And in those days, being a Communist was, being charged or being called a Communist was something that... in years later it became, you know, like if you were called -- I remember when I asked my students, we were talking about language, when I started teaching my freshman English class, and we got into the linguistics of the different epithets, you know, what you call people. I asked my students at one point, well, being called a Communist at one time was just something that just could ruin you, you could lose your job and so forth. And therefore they did pass, I think there was a law that made it against the law to call anybody -- you know, you could sue a person for libel if you were called a Communist. And so, and it wasn't true. And so I asked the students, what would be, what could people say to you that would be, what they call "fighting words" -- what would make you, what kind of words in your life? And the students thought about it and a boy said, "Fag?" You know, and so we went through that period. And then during the Iranian prisoner, I remember kind of every year I would ask, and it would change. Like if you were called an Iranian -- the fighting words changed, but at one time during the Joseph McCarthy period, being called a Communist was reason, they were called fighting words, it was something that could ruin your career, ruin your life. And so when Joseph McCarthy came out with -- and he often did, it was during also in the very beginning of the television era, I remember the whole, the hearings, you know, the committee hearings, congressional committee hearings were being put on television, but he was often seen, you know, waving, "I have in my hand such and such, a letter written by so-and-so saying" -- and some of it was not true. And so then somebody would say, oh well, you know... so it's like it is a libelous thing to do, is to call somebody -- but once, once you are called, like, a child molester, it's really, and then it turns out that it's not true, it's extremely difficult to erase it completely out of the consciousness of people's minds. And I think that was a great deal to do with what happened during the McCarthy period. And people were really afraid of sticking their heads out, of raising their voices and so forth. It was a very extraordinary period, I think.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.