<Begin Segment 30>

MN: Let's go back to your Berkeley years now. At UC Berkeley, what were you majoring in?

YK: Landscape architecture. So I first had to take a whole bunch of beginning architecture courses, including things like watercolor and pen and ink, which I had never done, but everybody in architecture had that probably when they were kids, for a long time. So I was way behind. In fact, in watercolor, I was lost. In fact, the instructor says, "There's a real question whether you should be in architecture." And that was the first F I ever got in my life, but it was a one-unit course, and they didn't require me to redo it. Pen and ink, I got by with a D. But anyway, but in landscape architecture, the bigger projects, I wasn't very good in presentation, but the bigger projects, I was pretty good in designing large parks, lake areas or golf courses, the bigger projects I did well. Because there, it was function more important than design.

MN: Although when you took that test in high school, didn't they say you were supposed to be good in designing?

YK: [Laughs] No, it just said that I had an affinity for design, interest. I had no skills.

MN: That came later.

YK: Yeah, when I got to Berkeley as a sophomore, I was expected to have design skills.

MN: Now when you were at Berkeley, you got really sick. What happened?

YK: Yeah, my senior year I had the flu, and so I finally went to a dispensary to get some medicine, and they said, "Well, you got a strep throat which is very contagious," so they put me in the hospital there, Colwell Hospital. And as the days and weeks went by, I was feeling better, but my fever wouldn't go down. I always had a slight fever. So they put me with the mononucleosis students who were there for weeks on end. And then the cap was, the hospital had a limit of thirty days, and I was starting to approach that, seeing my only symptom was a little higher temperature. And so they said, "Oh, no, you'll be able to stay on." But then about my twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth day, I started to break out on my hands with a rash, and then also in my crotch area. So when this Dr. Brown, who was a leader, came around with all their interns, says, "Aha, see, I told you he was gonna have scarlet fever." And they each took out of their wallet a dollar and gave it to her because apparently she was the only one who predicted that I had scarlet fever.

So then I missed a whole month of classes, and the main thing was the landscape design classes, over half of my time, it was a five-unit course, but I was way behind and so I tried to catch up on the project and I kind of threw some things together. But when the professor came around to give me my criticism, he really told me how bad it was. And I knew it was bad because he didn't recognize the fact that I'd been gone for a whole month. And so I just crumpled up the paper and threw it, and I walked out of the class and I dropped it. But then I did work out with one of the professors, who was mainly in my plant class, and another professor who was the head of the department, to take some classes from them during the summer, so I would be able to finish up. In the meantime, just before graduation time, everybody's getting their caps and gowns, but I got the flu again. I didn't dare go back to Colwell Hospital, so I didn't go through graduation and I had to stay there for the summer, but I at least was able to graduate that year.

MN: And that was '54?

YK: Yeah, so that was about August '54.

<End Segment 30> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.