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RS: And so, it wasn't until months after that, and I had gone on other interviews at other schools, that -- actually, there's one I'll tell you about that's an interesting story. And this was at Murray State University in Kentucky. And my best friend -- or one of my best friends from Syracuse had been hired at Murray State. And just a few weeks after he was offered a job they called me up and asked me if I would come down for an interview because they had just opened up another position. And so I went down there, hoping -- I mean, that suddenly became my top choice because Bob Manley was there, my good friend. And we'd talked about how great it would be to teach together, especially similar courses, and what we could do to that program, and so on. So I got there and there were these two guys that I knew that were doing the interviewing. And that's why I also thought I had a good shot at the job. And I got there late that afternoon and I was supposed to begin the interview process in the morning. And I had dinner with these two guys and everything was fine. We talked about when we would meet the next morning. They picked me up at the motel and they took me to coffee and they both had this grim look on their face. And they said, "We don't know how to tell you this, this is really embarrassing." And I said, "What?" Well, the chair of the department was a woman named Clara Eagle, who had been there for her entire career of forty-something years. She just had a heart attack. She was in the hospital. And Jerry DeShepherd and Bob Head, the two guys that were my hosts, would report to her and the told her, "Well, this, our candidate is here for the drawing job, Roger Shimomura," and all that. And they said, "She decided to close the position." And I said, "What? You mean I came here for nothing? Why?" And they said, "Well, because," he said, "She found out that you were Oriental," and that there are no Orientals in Murray, Kentucky," and I wouldn't be happy here. "And so, if he's not willing to withdraw, we'll just close the position and do the search next year." And I just sort of was stunned. And so they essentially just took me to the airport and I went back to Syracuse and that was it. And again, times were a little different. I mean, I didn't think about going back and suing them, which I should've, and probably could've had the job. But I think at that point, had I done that, I'm not sure I would have wanted to be there anyway.

But when Bob Manley found out he was just really furious and wasn't sure whether he wanted to go there, which he did. But what was further interesting was that about three years later, when I had landed in Kansas, I got a call from them and they asked me if I would come and if I would apply for the chair of the department. And I did. And I became a finalist between another person and myself. And, now bear in mind I'd only been teaching for two or three years. And so I went there, I interviewed, I thought I did a fairly good job but the other person, who was the chair of another department, got the job offer. And Bob Manley, at that point, was so upset that he quit. He gave up his job at Murray and he moved back to Boston. And that leads on to another story that I won't get into, but in any case, those are some of my interviewing experiences.

<End Segment 40> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.