<Begin Segment 8>

AH: Now, your mother and your father brought you up obviously to be educated, and to, they have a legacy of themselves going to college. Was the expectation from the beginning that you would go to college? Was that part of the reality of your life?

JA: Oh yeah, yeah.

AH: So in that way your situation was very much like say, Sansei, where the idea was that you were going to go, not some of you were going to go, but you were both going to go, right?

JA: That's right, yes. Because at that time, I was very much interested in horticulture. And I did a lot of projects in high school that was over and beyond what they were teaching in botany, and that was hydroponics, and that's something that they were thinking about, they never tried. And I did experiments and I grew a daisy six feet tall and that was... I wanted to go to Washington State. But my parents said, "We don't want to finance you in how to become a farmer, you become an engineer." I said, "No, I don't want to be an engineer." So, at one point, we were fishing way up in the high mountain lakes, and one evening a very tall, nice-looking white haired man came and wanted to use part of the lean-to. So we said, "We got lots of room so why don't you take your place." Well anyway, he started talking to us, and saying, "You know, you guys are just about time, ready to go to college. What are you going to be?" And I said, "I want to be a horticulturist." Okay. So he said, "My name is Chittenden," and I didn't know who it was. But anyway, he told us his being a civil engineer, and trips to China, and what he did. Then he got involved in Alcan Highway, and he said, "It's a very interesting profession." So anyway, I heard about him. And my parents said, "No, we don't want to finance you in to become a farmer, you become an engineer." So, I'm saying well, gee, I want to... fishery? No. Forestry? No. Engineer? So the only thing that came very close to being outside, was civil or mining, so I ended up civil. And what do you know, sophomore year, here's that gentleman I met. He's professor at the University of Washington, teaching C.E. And Chittenden, he is son of Chittenden, the Locks Chittenden; his father was the one that put in the locks, so he's son of. So anyway, I met him and that's how I become civil engineer.

AH: You're talking about your own career as though it were something that your parents would arrange for you rather than you for choosing for yourself.

JA: That's right, yeah, because every son, sons were all becoming engineers.

AH: Can you talk about that a little bit? Because here I teach at a school now where 30 percent of the students are Asian Americans and most of them are Southeast Asians. And a goodly number of them are, of course, in the sciences and in engineering and computer science and the like and everything. What's the thinking that goes on when... you think the parents have, or immigrant parents have for their kids?

JA: At that time, because so-and-so and so-and-so, they're engineers. That's it. So it's mostly boys were becoming engineers, "Why can't you?" Why a horticulturist?

AH: Well, what about your mom's own background? Did that have a lot to do with it? Because it's certainly nobody was telling you to be a historian, which is what your dad was, really, in college.

JA: Well, actually, my mother was a good mother, very strict and very disciplined, I mean, you stayed in line, no monkey business with her. You had to be home such-and-such time, you had to study, you had to go to sleep such-and-such time, and that was it, very disciplined. And I grew up very disciplined.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.