<Begin Segment 28>

SI: But as you were... as a Nisei, I was, I have been totally accepted as an equal amongst my peers in the field that I'm in. And my former chairman, who became an academic dean, lives in Montana, very good friend. We went to trips to Alaska together, I visited him three times since he moved to Montana, and I call him every few weeks, and I send him material. I followed him to Africa. He was there five years and he said, "Why don't you take my job? I'll come job and run your lab," so we exchanged offices. He says, "Sus, I know you're Japanese, but I really forget that you're any different from any of us." And he's only two years older, but he sort of considers me his son. And being accepted in the field without any apparent, obvious, or evidence that I'm different from any other Caucasian, Italian, any other ethnic group, I really feel that in one generation from sharecropper, poorly educated, parents to --

SF: Harvard professor.

SI: Yeah. They made very few of us professors because it's a very unique situation where the university has to have endowment for your salary for life before they can appoint a professorship for tenure, and associate professor is not tenured there. And you have eleven years to get tenure or out, and I've been there thirty some odd years. So about seven or eight years after, my friend in Montana, he put me through without my even knowing about this. He came on there and he says, "Sus, well, I got you through." I said, "What do you mean?" "I got you tenure at Harvard." "Really?" He just did it all on his own. He done all the ground work and the procedure is unlike any other university where it goes through -- I've been on several committees for some of these. And, anyway, so I feel that in one generation I've made a significant transition, and again, I think, I owe it -- I like to owe it to my mother and her basic outlook on life and doing what you can. Oh, my dad used to say, one other thing, is that he was a poor sharecropper farmer and not a very good one, as I said; but he said, "It doesn't matter what you do." He says you could become a professional ditch digger or a mechanic or -- he didn't have high hopes for me in any way -- but he says, "Do it the best you can, and if you become the best ditch digger around or in the country or whatever boundaries you want to set, that in itself is reward enough." So if I look back on what I did, this is essentially, whatever I do, become a mechanic or become a soldier or become -- now I'm doing carpentry and painting. I try to do the best I can and if I'm satisfied and happy with what I have done and do, well, I don't care what the hell anybody else thinks, I'm happy with myself that I've done this. I'd like to see my garage some day. [Laughs] But I think that is my general outlook and I have a good friend from Japan, who died two years ago, from Japanese nobility, Katsuma, Dan. I met him in the research lab in Woods Hole (Marine Biological Lab), we became lifelong friends. I visit him in Japan, he comes to stay with me in the U.S, and he says, you know Sus -- he became president of Tokyo Metropolitan University. He was from the University of Tokyo and he's almost revered in Japan as an eminent scholar. He says, "You know, Sus, whatever you do in life, try to be happy with what you're doing." And he says, "You know, if this world gains one more person who's satisfied with what he's done, what he's doing, and is happy with this, it's a real credit to the population of the world." And I think that if you keep this in mind, that whatever small niche that you might have in life on our relatively short stay in the world, you end up with many colleagues, friends, relatives and so forth; some of whom don't agree with you, fine, that's great; some of them who do and support you, but in the end I think it's satisfaction with yourself -- that at least you've done the best you could. And if you're happy with this, you're a credit to this world. And I like to think of it, life in general, in this way.

<End Segment 28> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.