<Begin Segment 11>

TI: So you went back to UCLA, and so talk about that in terms of what was your area of study at UCLA?

JI: I guess I had changed from political science to English and English literature, and that was, there was no writing program as such. There were writing courses taught, but not a writing program, and I wanted to write, but nearest thing was, was literature. So I, mostly English literature rather than American literature, although when I went to graduate school, my thesis was going to be on an American writer. So the, other than that, it was... but I was mostly, I spent most of my time in the gym. I was a, not an athletic, but I was a bum athlete is what I was. But I spent most of my time in the gym.

TI: Were you still on the, the wrestling team? You mentioned your wrestling...

JI: Yeah, I wasn't very good until my senior year.

TI: So at what, at what weight did you wrestle at?

JI: I wrestled 118 and 121. They had two different classifications because we wrestled year-round, intercollegiate in the spring and in fall we would do AAU, and they had different weight classifications. As a matter of fact, supposed to wear different shoes, that sort of thing. And when I started, we had a ring for college wrestling, like a boxing ring, and so we had a whole technique where you had to take him off the rope or you have to use the rope to spring back at a guy and that sort of thing. And then by the time I was a sophomore, they had made just a mat on the floor, and you had to have different techniques. But you had to have essentially two different techniques for AAU and intercollegiate. Rules were slightly different, too. But it was good that most of my friends were kids on the wrestling team, 'cause UCLA was a commuter school and so you didn't really have too much interaction with kids after hours or anything. If we'd had a dorm or something, the pattern would have been quite different, I think, but other, the only people who stayed on campus, they had women's dorms, but the men who stayed on campus were members of fraternities and that sort of thing. Or else, if you were in, they had a co-op out at Brentwood, which was about 4 miles out of campus, off campus.

TI: But I imagine most of the Japanese American students were pretty much, as you say, commuters, they lived and just commuted in. Now, so during this time, in 19-, I guess the end of '40, but actually the beginning of '41, what level were you at? Were you a third year or a fourth year? A junior or a senior?

JI: I came back as a junior, yeah.

TI: As a junior. So you were finishing up your junior year in the early part of '41, okay. And so during the --

JI: No, '41, that's right. I must have been a... I graduated, I was, graduated, so it was, well, yeah, ('41) when Pearl Harbor broke out. We, you know, they took a long time to evacuate people. It took a long time to decide that they were going to do it. And so I, if anything was going to happen subversively, it would have happened long before then. We had plenty of time if we wanted to do something subversive, and that's another fallacy of the whole business of evacuation.

TI: And so during that time, you were able to graduate, is that what happened?

JI: Well, campus became off-limits for a while. But prior to that, I was permitted to take my comprehensive exams and all the examinations I could take early, although I was unprepared for some of it, but at least I passed the comprehensive, which, without which you were not permitted to graduate.

TI: So this was in the, sort of, February/March timeframe of '42 that you were able to...

JI: Yeah.

TI: Okay, so you, so before you left Los Angeles, you actually had, you finished your degree at UCLA.

JI: Yeah, you could say we were graduated in absentia. I remember in the camp getting a letter from the provost inviting graduates to a tea, and I was going to write back and say, "I'm sorry, for reasons of incarceration, I'm sorry that I cannot attend this tea." [Laughs] But anyway, I got, I got a diploma in due time through the mail, and a friend of mine brought me my letter sweater.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.