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TI: Okay, so another question, going back. When you were in high school what did you want to do? Did you have a sense of what you wanted to be when you grew up, or what was that?

NA: Well, and again, it's probably, again, going back to my grandmother's planting, learning much about her life, and in a lot of ways it was tragic, some of the paths that she had to take, losing her husband and not able to fulfill their dream, sending her children to Japan, getting the son through Imperial University, expecting him to come back and follow going into medicine and all that, so somewhat in my little head is like, okay, it's gonna be a medical career. So starting in junior high school I take German, and I take German through high school, so sprechen sie Deutsch, you know?

TI: So you think because of the chemistry, or what, why?

NA: Well, in those days, in my grandmother's days, medicine was German. And there was nobody nurturing me nor me telling people that I think that's what I'm gonna have to do is go into medicine, or want to do. And ultimately when I get to college I'm a bio-science major.

TI: Sort of bio-science, pre-med kind of thinking?

NA: Kind of, but not knowing if that's really -- and I ended up really enjoying much more field biology and genetics, that kind of stuff. But ultimately that wasn't necessarily where I'd go either.

TI: Okay. So before --

NA: That or becoming a teacher, one or the other.

TI: So before we go to college I want to just, anything else in high school that we should talk about in terms of what happened with family, with you, or any other activities? Go ahead. [Laughs] What is that?

NA: Well it's, and there's all that kind of sports thing that was going on too, but I think one of the things growing up, in junior high school and going to a Christian church, that changed some other areas of responsibility, and would, it allowed me... like I was, I think I went to, I went over to Church of Christ and that was Reverend Howard Toriumi, who eventually moves down to Los Angeles and establishes Union Center, I mean Union Church, and becomes quite a leader in, well, in the community movements, Howard Toriumi.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.