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MA: So I was wondering if you could talk about the impact that camp had on you and forcing you to sort of grow up and change, and how that played out after you got home.

CQ: Like I said before, out of every bad comes some good. And the thing that did come out of there was I was able to go to the bathroom by myself, I was able to go to the showers by myself, and I was able to go to the mess hall by myself and found someone to eat with. But it was very difficult, it was very hard for me to be very social. So when we came out of camp, I decided, when I start school again, I'm just going to be the person I really want to be. And so I pretended. I pretended to be really outgoing, I pretended to be really friendly. Because these things weren't really natural to me, but they, but when you pretend, and when you -- and like my sister who was like a mom to me, my second sister in the family, she always said, "Never think about yourself. Always think about the other person." And so that's what sort of happened, and I, with all this pretending to be a good person that I knew that I really was, but I wanted it to come out and I wanted to be helpful and I wanted to be gregarious, and I wanted to have friends. And so I really tried very, very hard, and I felt, I started doing this in the seventh grade when I came out, and the teacher had given me the name Judy. And a very good friend was another blue-eyed blonde, Mona, this time, she gave me the best compliment in the world. 'Cause the war had just ended and she said, "You know, Judy, you have nothing to worry about because you look Chinese." And that was the best compliment that I'd ever heard in my life. Sort of like, you know, "Thank you, thank you for saying that," because I was feeling so bad about being Japanese that I, you know, I didn't want to be considered the enemy, and I really wanted to be something else. And I would never be considered an American, 'cause everyone would always ask you, "What are you?" And you'd always say, "I'm an American." And they'd say, "No, but really, what are you?"

MA: "Where are you from?"

CQ: And so I'd always say, "I'm a Japanese American." And so that was sort of fun, and we were very good friends. And so when I went to Huntington Beach high school as a ninth grader, I just was much more outgoing and so I volunteered for a lot of things, and I was the yearbook art editor, and I did decorations for the junior/senior prom, and then I was in charge of decorations for our, when we became seniors for the junior/senior prom. And then I, you know, was president of a teenage club in high school. And so I really had a group of friends that I felt very comfortable with, and went to the sock hops and we just did everything. And I was always shy inside, but I felt that I had at least come out enough, I wasn't really in the popular, popular groups, but we had a very strong unit of people that I hung around with that were, you know, we were all studious and we all did the right things, and we went out for sports, and we went to the dances, and we just had a lot of fun. And then I went on to college, and I was the first in my family to go to college.

MA: And tell me about that a little bit. Did you always sort of know that you wanted to go on to college? Was that something that you thought about a lot, or just sort of...

CQ: I just always wanted to go. I just didn't want to start working like my sisters and brothers, and I just didn't want to get married right away. But it was because of my brothers and sisters, that they did start working, that I was able to have a car, that I was able to have a coat, I mean, you know, like my sister just above me, she worked at the Bank of America, and she'd buy me a new coat every year. Little things that I would never even think of having, 'cause my dad took care of a lot of things. But then my brother was such a mechanical genius, he could just put anything together and make a car, almost, and so he got a car for me. And I went to college. And of course I worked as a housegirl at Long Beach State.

MA: Did you stay with a family also, and you...

CQ: Yes. I took care of a little boy at night, 'cause they worked at night, both the husband and wife worked, they were draftsmen and an engineer. So they sort of worked in the late afternoon, and then the night shift or something like that. And so I was there for their kid, and I was able to go to school. And I just had to make dinner and clean house and stay with her, stay with their small son. And so it made a very good arrangement for me. And so I was like a schoolgirl, they used to just call them schoolgirls, "Schoolgirl Wanted."

MA: Did they pay you or was it in compensation, they gave you room and board?

CQ: They gave me room and board, and they gave me ten dollars a week.

MA: Small.

CQ: Yeah, a small compensation. And then I had enough friends that would pick me up and take me to school and drop me off after school, or I could take a bus. And so it worked out really fine.

MA: And which college did you attend?

CQ: I went to Long Beach junior college, it was called Long Beach City College. And then I transferred to Long Beach State.

MA: And what were you studying at that time? Were you pursuing arts education?

CQ: Well, yeah. I was going, I was going to be a graphic designer, an artist, and so I was taking all these classes. And they had a really great schedule. And then in my sophomore year, I started, instead of working at Broadway for Easter vacation, summer vacation, I went to work for the YMCA and I started teaching the arts and crafts program. That carried through, through the school year. And so I was teaching arts and crafts to these kids from seven to eleven. Or was it eleven to fifteen? I don't remember. Anyway, they were a little older bunch of kids, so it must have been a little older, maybe it was seven to fifteen. But there were several groups that I taught after school. And I loved it so much and I had so much fun, that I decided I'd become an art teacher, and that's what I did. I got my degree in art ed.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.