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TI: So let's go to law school. So you applied to law school from Japan, then what happened?

PN: I got into the University of Oregon, I got into Lewis & Clark, I went down to the University of Oregon to see whether or not I wanted to go there and I said, "Do you have programs for minority students? Or what do you have for minority students?" And the Director of Admissions said, "Well, you first have to prove that you're a minority." And I kind of looked at her and said, "Well, you can look at the last census data." And I decided I'm not going anywhere where I have to prove that I'm a minority. So I went to Lewis & Clark, and in the first year, fifty-six percent of the minority students flunked out, and four percent of the white students flunked out. We started a minority student organization, and I went up to a lot of Asian students, and they weren't interested. So the Minority Law Students Association was started with seven African Americans and me in a bar in northeast Portland. I think people got much more interested in the organization when they flunked out of law school. So we started a student organization called the Northwestern Students Against Racism, we started to organized. I probably spent more time out of class than in class to try to get the students who had failed back into school. There was a subcommittee of the standing committee that was looking into it, investigating it, and I went to one of their meetings. And the head of the committee, Sid Lesac, who was a U.S. Attorney, looked at me and said, "You have to prove... you're not a minority. I mean, you're Asian, I'm Jewish, etcetera. Asians aren't a minority." So I had to haul in an Asian lawyer from the local area to talk about what it's like to be an Asian lawyer. So sort of like, over and over again, talking about that same situation. So I think we fought really hard, we got some of the students back in school. But in the course of it, the dean at one meeting said to me, in a public meeting, said, "What's behind those dark, inscrutable eyes?" You know, sort of a very racist comment. I remember... I just had a number of incidents in law school. So I graduated in the last class of all women at Vassar, when I went to Lewis & Clark, the faculty was all white and all male except for one legal writing teacher. So I ran for the Faculty Appointments Committee on a platform of diversity, and went during my finals week of my second year to Chicago to interview people at this whole gathering where people interview to teach at law schools. And one of the people we got came to Lewis & Clark because, she said, "I came because you had a student on the interviewing panel." So it's like going to Japan, understanding my identity, really gave me a sense and purpose of who I was and who I wanted to be.

Law school was really tough. I wanted to drop out every other day, and then I said, well, what'll I do if I drop out? I could become a waitress or a secretary or whatever. So I stuck with it, but it was not an experience that I liked. And I remember listening to and reading Korematsu in con. law class, and thinking to myself, "If I could do something about those cases, it would make these three years of torture worthwhile." But what could you do? They went to the U.S. Supreme Court, the next court is the court in Heaven, or God or whatever, and I'm not ready to go there and argue it. So nothing much to do. But I did do a lot of political work in law school. We started a, that organization, helped organize a convention on equality and justice, and did a lot of student organizing.

TI: Good.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.