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TI: Okay, well, this is interesting. So we were talking about, you were, your first field of study was political science, and you're thinking of being a foreign service officer.

KY: Yeah.

TI: So what happened to that, that path? What happened? Why didn't you become a...

KY: Oh, I didn't become a Poly-Sci major because the faculty advisor... his name was Skinner? Anyway, this professor says, "Yamashita, you're a Japanese." "Well, I'm an American citizen, I was born here." I don't think he meant that I was a Japanese national, but anyway, he says, "You're a Japanese. I don't know about that major, mainly because our government, the American government has never had, and I don't think it will ever have," or at least he thinks and he lives and so on, "but we'll never have anybody other than a white American. And you're a Japanese national, minority, in a sense, 'colored,' non-white. Never been an ambassador or a consul. And you won't get very far in the foreign service, so I wouldn't advise that." And that's what really turned me off. Because if that was the case, then why should I stay in this? There's not much future, there's a limit. "You know, you can maybe become an employee of the foreign service, but you wouldn't get where you want." So I said, "Well, I better give this up." So I turned into what they call business administration, economics.

TI: But when this faculty advisor advised you to switch, to switch majors, do you recall how you felt about that? Yeah, how did you feel?

KY: At that time, I don't recall a strong feeling, but I'm sure I felt, "What the heck is he talking about? I'm an American." I don't feel it now, but my feeling must not have been very strong 'cause I don't have any particular reaction. I'm sure at the time I was disappointed and all this. Kind of sad, but America is America.

TI: So you switched majors to business.

KY: Business administration, economics. And I entered majoring in foreign trade.

TI: So what did you do with your Japanese language during this time? Did you continue studying Japanese language, or did you just focus more on business?

KY: In college? I knew that the more Japanese I learned wouldn't hurt because, well, not only my parents, but in some way, I thought I could promote relations between Japan and the U.S. And I guess I could have, I really don't recall how strong it was, but feeling that maybe Buddhism would have Japanese language involved. In other words, the priest as well as the scholars would write in Japanese. So might help me in Buddhism. So I continued that, and I took two years of advanced Japanese language study at the college, and actually, that became one of the important things that happened in my life because I got employed in the following years by a former professor who was teaching this advanced Japanese. He said, "Hey, here's a guy that knows Japanese." But that's a...

TI: Yeah, we'll come to that later.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright (c) 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.