<Begin Segment 13>

[Ed. note: This transcript has been edited by the narrator]

TI: So let's, let's move to the University of Washington. So you were staying at, you said, the Japanese Students Club because your family was in Montana. So describe that. What was that like?

FT: Well, we (...) each had a room to study in. Usually about two of us in the room (...). That was on the second floor. And (...) the third floor (was just) open space with (double-decker metal bunks). (The first floor was the) living quarters and recreation area. The basement had the dining room and the kitchen. And we were all assigned weekend jobs, like one week we (did) the vacuuming and (...) housecleaning. During the week, we had to (be) dishwasher, (...) kitchen police type thing. So we all chipped in. There was a manager, a student manager, who took care of the finances and so on and assigned jobs and assigned quarters and all that kind of stuff. And we spent a lot of time in the living room area, and people that didn't live in there, that lived in Seattle, but they used it as sort of a place to study and to socialize. So we had a lot of card games going on all the time, pinochle, and cribbage, and stuff like that.

TI: And about how many students lived there?

FT: Gee, I don't know. It was quite a few, if you look at the pictures of all these people. There's, I don't know.

TI: So I want to make sure I understood, so the basement was kind of the kitchen. The first floor was more recreation.

FT: Living room.

TI: And then the second floor was your individual...

FT: Study rooms.

TI: Individual.

FT: Individual, yeah.

TI: And then the third floor was the cots where you slept?

FT: Yes, sleeping area.

TI: Did you sleep more in a barracks-type situation, or dormitory...

FT: Yeah, just an open space with the double-decker cots.

TI: So in a big room there would be like a dozen of you sleeping?

FT: Oh, more than that.

TI: More than that. So if someone were a snorer or something, then he'd keep people up, if they'd snore or make noises.

FT: Uh-huh. Yeah, I guess so. [Laughs]

[Interruption]

FT: (Narr. note: Some of the people there included: Hiram Akita, George Abe, Mas Odoi, John Sato, Toru Sakahara, John Tanaka, Don Matsumoto, and others from Seattle suburbs and the White River Valley to the south; Ed and Frank Korekiyo, Jim Yamauchi and a bunch from Yakima, Wapato and Pasco east of the Cascades; the Yuasa and Numata brothers from Spokane; George Yamaguchi from Portland; and two students from Hawaii. Hiram and I were the closest friends, even to today. During World War II, he was interned in Tule Lake along with me. He was from Burlington, north of Everett.)

TI: Yeah, a lot of people in the outlying areas went to Tule, just more of the Seattle people went to Minidoka. But I wanted to ask you now, so that was your housing, what about the University of Washington? What was that like for you?

FT: Oh, I wasn't much of a student. [Laughs] I was cutting classes all the time. Yeah, I didn't (...) didn't like studying. Especially the big classes, like economic, you go to the lecture room and it seems like there's a hundred people in there. And (...) there's no contact with the professors, like in our homeroom in high school, (you're) in a crowd, and (listen) and take notes whenever you can. And then the result is you got to get a blue book test. I didn't enjoy the university at all. [Laughs]

TI: Did you have a sense of what you wanted to study, what area of study you wanted to go into?

FT: Well, I wanted to go into journalism, but I started out in English literature. I thought that'd give me a background in writing.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.