<Begin Segment 21>

TI: So after you finished high school, what happens next?

FD: Well, I had heard that California was now open to Japanese Americans so that we could go back there. And then my parents, my family had already moved back to Riverside while I was in Ohio, so I decided, well, I'll go to UC Berkeley.

TI: And why Berkeley and not Los Angeles, like UCLA or someplace closer?

FD: Oh, because in those days, we considered UCLA inferior. And the only school worth going to, that is, public school that I knew of was Berkeley. And besides, one of the reasons that I wanted to go to UC Berkeley was because the big brother of my best girlfriend was attending UC Berkeley.

TI: And what was the big brother to you? Just someone that because he was there, you wanted to go?

FD: Yeah, he was, just happened to be someone who was there, and I sometimes said hello to when he happened to when he happened to be home. He wasn't a close friend of mine, it was his little sister who was my friend.

TI: Okay, but then it was comforting to just know that you would know someone at Berkeley.

FD: Uh-huh. And then there were other people I knew who had gone to Berkeley.

TI: And so how difficult was it for you to get into Berkeley?

FD: None at all, no difficulty at all.

TI: And so you go to Berkeley and what was that like for you, to actually to be back on the West Coast?

FD: Well, it was sort of overwhelming, because here I'd been in this tiny school with only five hundred students, and all of a sudden I'm in this school that has thousands of students in each class. So I just felt overwhelmed for a while.

TI: Now, were there very many Japanese going to Berkeley?

FD: Oh, yes, there were some. And so eventually I met a few. And then one led to another and so on. And when I first... I stayed with a Caucasian girl's family who had moved to Berkeley from Riverside, and so I stayed with them for a couple of weeks until I found a place to stay. That is, I had to work as a so-called schoolgirl in order to afford to go. So as soon as I found a place to work, off I went.

TI: And going back to your family, you said they returned to Riverside. So I'm guessing that your dad returned to the church. And how was it for him? Did a lot of Japanese Americans come back to Riverside?

FD: Yes. In fact, more than before the war, because in camp a lot of people who lived in surrounding communities got acquainted with us and with my father. And so people who lived in San Bernardino, Redlands, and other small communities around Riverside started coming to the Riverside church.

TI: Oh, so after the war, the congregation got bigger then.

FD: Yes, uh-huh.

TI: And that was because of the camp connection?

FD: I think so.

TI: So from a church standpoint, it actually helped for your dad, for more people to get exposed to your dad's teachings, and then they then went after.

FD: Uh-huh.

TI: Okay. You know, in my notes it shows that you started at Berkeley, but then you graduated from UCLA.

FD: Oh, that was because I was having too much fun at Berkeley. [Laughs]

TI: So tell me about that story. That wasn't in your writing, so what happened at Berkeley?

FD: Well, in high school, a lot of kids had boyfriends and went to dances and had dates and such, but I never did. I never had a boyfriend. There was one boy that I liked, and that I had short conversations with between classes once in a while, but I wouldn't call him a boyfriend. Other than that... oh, and then I didn't go out on dates because I had no boyfriend to go with. And while I was at Berkeley, well, I was sort of delighted to discover that boys seemed to be attracted to me. They would come up to me and ask me my name and stuff like that, and any other environment, one wouldn't speak to a stranger, but I felt that, well, since they were fellow students, I guess it's okay to talk to these boys who were asking me this and that. And so I started going out on dates. Well, since I had never had a boyfriend before, I was so pleased, happy that people were, that boys were interested in me, that I decided to, I said, "Well, I am taking social studies after all, so I guess going on dates is social." So anyway, I jokingly told people that I was majoring in social studies. And then eventually, I guess I didn't study enough, so my grades sort of suffered. And one semester I was on probation, which was a big shock. And so my parents said, "Well, maybe you should either quit school and go to work, or transfer to a school closer to home." And so I transferred to UCLA and they wanted me to go home every weekend instead of going out on dates. [Laughs]

TI: [Laughs] So they had to give you a little more structure.

FD: Yeah, so that's why I graduated from UCLA.

TI: And what did you graduate in at UCLA?

FD: International relations with emphasis on the Far East. What I really wanted was to study Asian American studies, but they didn't have anything like that in those days. So the closest I could get was Poli-sci, that is, political science.

TI: And so at this point, how politically aware would you say you were? This is, you're in college, I mean, you had just one through an experience where the U.S. government, and you're a U.S. citizen, learned that they just did something they're not supposed to do, and put Japanese Americans in concentration camps. And now you go into political science. So how would you describe yourself in terms of your political awareness?

FD: Well, I guess I was more politically aware than most of my Japanese American friends. But at Cal I discovered that I wasn't that unusual, that there were a lot of other Japanese Americans who felt the same way that I did.

TI: So would you then talk about these issues?

FD: Yes, uh-huh.

TI: And what kind of conversations would you have? Would you talk about the camps and what it did to the community and things like that?

FD: Yeah, sometimes.

TI: And so you found kind of a kindred spirit, I mean, people who you could talk with about this that they understood.

FD: Uh-huh.

TI: Well, so that kind of leads into after you graduated, you went to go work for the ACLU.

FD: Uh-huh.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2016 Densho. All Rights Reserved.