<Begin Segment 16>

MA: At that point, you were pretty, you said you went into pre-med, so you were, then, on your way to becoming, to going into medicine and becoming a doctor. Was that...

KB: Well, not really. I was enrolled in classes, which were required to go into medical school, put it that way, okay. At the same time, I was still a little bit interested in journalism, so I used to go to the, I think they called it the Daily Shack, the UW paper is the UW Daily. And where it was produced was called the Shack. So I volunteered to go there, and they knew that I was not a journalism student, but they accepted me and asked me to write some headlines for the newspaper. And then they gave me an assignment to interview the assistant dean, which sort of was shocking to a, you know, freshman student. But I said, "Okay, I'll do it," so I made an appointment with this person and interviewed him. And he was very nice. I don't know whether he was always the one interviewed by a beginning journalism student or what, but he was very nice. I can't remember his name now. So I had to write it up and present it to the people at the Shack. And gradually I kind of lost interest in going over there, because I was more lower campus and I had my friends in the lower campus, my classes were lower campus.

MA: And the Shack was sort of in a different area?

KB: Sort of more in a different area. So I said, "Oh, forget about it." And I got involved in, more with my pre-med classes.

MA: And those were mainly science classes?

KB: Mostly science classes.

MA: Were there many women in these classes?

KB: Not very many.

MA: Majority men?

KB: Yeah. They were, oh yeah, overwhelmingly men.

MA: How did you feel being in that sort of male environment in class? Did it affect the way that you felt in class?

KB: I don't remember that it bothered me that much. I think I was competitive enough that I felt I could do just as well as anybody. I got along with, it seems to me I got along with everybody. And I had my friends who were female, and we kind of stuck together. We had similar classes, some of them same classes, and so I felt like I had somebody besides all these men. [Laughs]

MA: You had a support network, yeah. What about some of your professors that you had? Were there, did any sort of stick out in your mind as being great mentors or not so good? What's your reflections about your professors?

KB: Okay, I had my, well, actually, he was in the department of biology, but he was my zoology teacher and parasitology teacher, he was wonderful. He always started out by giving some advice, general advice to young people, how they should behave and so forth. And really, I felt very close to him. Under the system in the university, however, you never worked with the professor, you worked with assistants. So I never got personally involved with this man, but I really used to enjoy his lectures. Then there was a bacteriology professor who was a female. She, my friends who were microbiology majors knew her very well, and I happened to take her class, I think it was, like, in my senior year, close to my graduation. And when the evacuation order came, she was so nice to me. She gave me -- oh, I should tell you that I was a good student, and I was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and she gave me her chain that her Phi Beta Kappa (key) was on. She didn't give me the key, my friends bought me my key. And also she was very generous with gifts before I had to leave Seattle. And I often think about her because she was Jewish, and maybe because of her Jewish background, she felt this way towards me.

MA: What was her name?

KB: Her name was Rachael Hofstadt.

MA: Were the Nisei students at the UW a close-knit group at all, or did they have events or activities or social things?

KB: I think they did, but I never got involved with them. I'm, in a way, I'm sorry about that. When I was a freshman, I told you I got involved with these other people, and we stuck together. And one time we were having lunch, somebody came to look for me and said she was a member of Fuyokai and she was my big sister. I can't even remember her name now, but, you know, I had a little chat with her, and she invited me to one of the meetings, but I just never went. I didn't seem to need to meet other Japanese students, and there were not very many Japanese females on the lower campus. There were many in the upper campus, I don't know whether you heard (of) upper campus, lower campus.

MA: Was the lower campus more science?

KB: More science, and the upper campus more liberal arts, home ec., literature, English and so forth. So I never really got involved with the other Japanese students except the ones who were in my classes. In a way, maybe it wasn't a good idea, but that's the way it was. [Laughs]

MA: Well, it seems like you had a close-knit circle of friends.

KB: I did.

MA: Who were of different races. Did you ever talk about race or anything like that, or even like being Japanese with this group of girlfriends?

KB: If we did, I don't think we did seriously. I just don't remember. Just one of them. I'm not sure that the race came into the picture very much. After Pearl Harbor, we were always worried about how our friends would treat us. And as far as my friends went, it didn't make any difference. We were just as close as before.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.