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AI: Well, also in high school, it's a time when you were saying that your parents wanted you to continue on with the business, with the store, but you were starting to get some other interests. So what kinds of things were you becoming interested in?

HK: Well, I was interested in, in your sophomore year, second year, one of the required courses was public speaking. And this was dreaded. People, they had to pass it, and it was a one-semester course. And they had to take it, and they had to pass it. [Laughs] And then they always talk, "Ooh, public speaking is hard." Well, I took it, and it was, it was real easy. I enjoyed it. And as it turned out, the teacher turned out to be a racist during the war. But while I was taking the course, she knew that I was, I was good. So she was one of my favorite teachers, and yet, I didn't know that she was such a racist. Well, maybe the war brought it out, but anyway, and then I discovered that writing came to me rather easily, so I took courses that involved writing. English was always a good class for me, and book reports were always, and I could do those things and get good grades. And... what else? Well, you know, I was planning to go to college anyway, even though my father never thought that I would, and I was taking all these courses, language courses, that were required for college preparatory. And then I didn't quite take science because that's kind of hard, hard, so that was left for later to make up. And then math, too, I don't think I took any math. Maybe I took math as a correspondence course, algebra.

AI: So, but in your mind, even earlier in your high school years, you were already thinking of going to college?

HK: Yes, I was. Yes.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.