<Begin Segment 9>

MA: And so what was, what year did you graduate from high school and then go into USC?

IK: June 1957 from high school, and then I entered SC in September of '57. Graduated with my BA in '61, and then my fifth year was the year that I took my education courses for the credential, and it was also the year that I student taught. In those days, we had to student teach... if we're secondary, we student taught in our major and our minor.

MA: And what were your major and minor?

IK: My major was history, my minor was English, but other than my first year at Foshay junior high, where I did a combination of social studies and English, when I got to Monroe, it was Japanese and English, so I never taught history after that. But I student taught in English in a B-9 high achieving class at Foshay, and then I student taught a regular level U.S. history at Manual Arts. And my experience at Foshay was so nice, 'cause my master teacher was just great, that I returned there for my first assignment when the principal asked me to become a regular teacher. And then it was midway through that year -- and it was a tough year, too -- since that Foshay was already, I'm not sure exactly, but it was probably eighty percent black.

MA: And what neighborhood is this located in?

IK: It's right by SC. That's why it was one of the training schools. So SC, Dorsey, Manual, and I imagine the elementary schools for the elementary teachers. It was a tough year, but I did, I enjoyed it. And then it was early in the spring when Dr. Theodore Chen from USC called and said that Carnegie and USC want to start a pilot program in Japanese language, and that obviously the L.A.U.S.D. would be it, 'cause they were the biggest district where it's possible. And so he asked me to interview for one of the three spots, and the three schools were Dorsey, Monroe in the valley, and Venice, Venice High School.

MA: Going back a little bit to your time at USC, how many other, I guess, what was the Japanese American student community there, and of those, how many women were at school with you?

IK: You know, there seemed to be quite a few, just because visually you would see a whole bunch. But I have a feeling it must be because we congregated. Because I know that the white kids would call the area by Doheny library the "Oriental tea garden," because, I guess, that's where everybody was. So it's hard to say in terms of the total population, I have no idea what the enrollment was at USC. I'm sure it's somewhere if you Google it. And then probably a minority of that. Because, at that time, of course, it's really cheap now. When I first entered SC, tuition was twenty-two dollars a unit. Now, that won't even buy you a book. But, and it was, because it was a tuition school, a private school, in contrast to UCLA which was really just starting at that point. UCLA was not the big university at that point. It didn't have any professional schools, no dental school, no pharmacy school. That's why no school of education for master's and PhDs. That's why everybody was at SC, and that's why you have the old boy's network for the longest time being SC. Not enough people realize that. But anyway, I remember that somewhere around, I guess, my junior year at SC. And a lot of the JA guys, and not just JA, all the Asians that were there, there were Chinese, Korean, I'm not sure if there were others of other Asian extractions, but probably very few. But I do remember that I heard a couple of the guys talking, and apparently there was a quota. Not an official quota, but there was a quota for dental school, like two a year.

MA: On Asian student admission?

IK: Right, yeah. I have no idea, but I know there was, somehow or other, I guess maybe they said, "Oh, last year, two," "Year before that, two." Somehow, these rumors are based on some kind of information. And I didn't hear that for -- although I didn't date too many guys from med school, so I have no idea if med school had that quota. A huge number of guys -- and they were mostly guys -- the dental school had no women students that I know of, except in dental hygiene. Pharmacy school, or in the pre-pharm, there were a number of women, lot of women, and guys, too, of course. So that school was big. There were a lot of Asian kids all over. They had their own fraternity and sorority. Well, the dental students did, too. School of Commerce was on the smaller side, but I think it was all this status thing. This was kind of somewhere that I got this information, and so it's not my, anything that I made up, not my theory. But it was the kind of thing where people would say, "If you can't get into med. school, then you go to dental school. If you can't get into dental school, then you go to pharmacy school. If you can't get into pharmacy school, then you go to commerce." Almost like engineering. If you can't get into electrical, then you go to civil, and then if you can't do that, then you go to mechanical. So it was kind of this status thing. I'm not sure exactly how it really rolled out in that way.

MA: So you were a history major, though, primarily?

IK: Uh-huh.

MA: And what were your classes like? Was it focused on U.S. history, and if so, was there any talk about...

IK: U.S. and world history, that's about it.

MA: Was there anything about Asian American anything at that time?

IK: No, no. We had no Asian American. Like I said, the only department we had was called East Asian Studies, and that was headed by Dr. Theodore Chen, who was very well-known in the Asian history circles. But when you studied East Asian history, you were across the ocean. There was no Asian American. That happened way later. When I say "way," maybe, what, ten years?

MA: And with that, I imagine a lot of, sort of, these heritage social organizations, Asian American groups that you find in college now. I mean, was that there when...

IK: Oh, like NSU and stuff?

MA: Yeah.

IK: Oh, no, of course not. Because I think the NSU kind of... and there was another one that was kind of like ACSA, but it's not ACSA, I know that. But anyway, those organizations were kind of a natural outgrowth of (the growth of) Asian American studies. And UCLA was the first one as far as I know. I think they're the ones who started NSU, and now they're NSU and whatever else the offshoots that they called. No, so there was no Asian American Studies, there was no class that taught about the American side of World War II in terms of involving (U.S.). Nothing. There were, as far as in the liberal arts department, I don't recall... well, let's say with my teachers, because I certainly wouldn't be taking everybody. But of my professors, they were all white, mostly white male, except when I took Japanese language, and... I don't know if I even took Asian history. I can't remember. I know I took... everybody had to be in what they called Man and Civ, that was the freshman... that's when we had maybe two hundred in Bovard Auditorium. So everybody, that was one of the requirements, and that was basically world history from the caveman times. And I took South American history, U.S. history, of course. They were all white, though.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.