<Begin Segment 15>

TI: And then what happened after Los Angeles?

PJH: After Los Angeles? So I came back home in July of 1973... correct, '73, so from '73, July to the fall, I stay with my, to take care of my grandma, and for last two months of the year I went to Santa Barbara to live with my, my brother. And I worked with him at Straw Hat Pizza. [Laughs] And that was just to reestablish myself, try to get some money and try to determine where I was gonna go again, but that was like, I'm gonna go back to Berkeley, I'm going to major in social welfare and maybe law combined, or social policy. That was something that was, I was gravitating towards. And then, before the end of the year, Roy told me, "Hey, there's a job here in San Jose and they're looking for an Asian woman." I'm thinking, Asian woman. [Laughs] And it was with the planning department, and I thought, well, I do want to get back up to the Bay Area and I do want to make some more money before I really get into school, so I put a resume together and applied for this position. I got, I got through the screening and they told me that, "We really like your resume, your experiences, but this is a job for being an intern as a student at San Jose State, so for you to get this job you have to be a student at San Jose State with the planning department." What the heck is the planning department? And I really wanted it bad enough that, okay, and it said, "Well, do you think you would want to..." they encouraged me, actually, to apply to get in the school and it was like already, just about, they had already cut off applications, but they let my application slide through. Mike Honda, who was the ombudsman at that time and had helped me get in, he was actually on the committee to screen who would be selected on this program, and yeah, people bent over backwards, I got in as a grad student.

TI: But it was kind of in a different area than you originally were thinking of doing.

PJH: Totally, 'cause I was just like one track mind, job, job. And what is planning? Still asking, what is planning?

TI: [Laughs] But it got you a job.

PJH: It got me the job and Asian American Studies, Roy had just graduated from San Jose State and I wanted to get involved with Asian American Studies again as a grad student.

TI: And he was also starting up this new thing at the Buddhist church with taiko also.

PJH: Yeah, that had already started by the time I had come. Yeah, just started. In fact, I was in Los Angeles, coming, having come back from Japan, with my grandma when Roy and Reverend Abiko and Dean Miyakusu actually were coming down to Los Angeles to pick up the first drums and then, before going back to San Jose, dropped by to see me. And so in a way it was like I saw the beginning of San Jose Taiko with the first drums.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.