<Begin Segment 42>

AI: Well, I'm so interested that your mother encouraged you to go away to college.

MK: What she was... had finished high school herself, so, yes, she was very liberal, and educated, herself, compared to her peers. And so she definitely -- but my father, I remember my father saying, "Oh, she doesn't need to go to college. (...) She's got three brothers. She'll always be taken care of." But my mother knew that, well, being as tall as I am, being the way I am, who am I gonna find as a mate? And then now, the next step was to get married, right? Well my mother was thinking beyond that. And Kyoto was, she knew, we knew, that was never touched by the bomb. And I think the Americans planned it that way because it was historically, such a rich history. So, yeah, I appreciate the fact that my mother, I really overheard the discussion with my father and my father said, "Yeah, your brothers will take care of you so you don't need, you don't need to go to school." So there was his, Japanese in him. So, I remember that.

AI: But in the end, you did, you did go to --

MK: He did approve and I did go. And I did have a page of that letter from the University saved. And Doshisha was American-sponsored by the Congregational Church. But then, I understand that during the war that it was cancelled out. However, and then my Doshisha experience was different in that due to the hysteria in Japan, (...) the English department had burned up all their material in English. And so, by the time I had enrolled it was no longer a so-called English school -- they had no material, written material. They scrounged and found some. Well, that's what they Xeroxed. And they started asking us to translate the Shakespeare into Japanese, and the Japanese Shakespeare into English, and they kept us busy that way. But I could read the Shakespeare and then write it in Japanese. If it was the reverse, it would have been more difficult for me, 'cause my Japanese was not that fluent. So, again, I just played my game. I mean, and knowingly, and it was a survival kind of thing. And in Japan you always have a study period, I think it was seven to nine, we have a study period. Well, our meals were very sparse 'cause I stayed at the dorm. We had a study time, during that time every student was busy trying to supplement their, their diet, because we were all starving and what the dorm fed us was not enough. And even in those days, nuka? Do you know what nuka is? The grain from the rice mill, you know, when they polish (bran) --

AI: Oh, the leftover.

MK: Yeah, polish the rice. Well, we used to (...) make tsukemono out of it. They use that as a tsukemono paste over everything, but they tried to use that in stretching your flour and making pancakes, and that was oftentimes a meal, during wartime meals, because the rice was so scarce. So, my mother would send me some nuka, the (bran). And I would spend the time, spending my study time cooking these pancakes for my roommate and myself. So this is the way we preoccupied ourself, with the hunger and the scarcity. So, these are things that I think has been with me. So you learn how to be frugal. I wish my kids had it, a little bit [Laughs]

<End Segment 42> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.