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TI: So let's go on. So you now go to the University of Washington, and where did you live on campus, or in Seattle?

FS: You know, I moved into SYNKOA House, which was the old Japanese Students Club. And it had just been reactivated, my brother John was living there before World War II, and of course, when we had to leave, that's where he came back home from, the Students Club. And that house was maintained, renamed SYNKOA House after all the vets that were killed in action, the last names. And the K in SYNKOA House -- I'm sorry, the N in SYNKOA House is William Nakamura, who our courthouse is now named after as a Medal of Honor recipient. But anyway, I went to SYNKOA, lived there four years. I served as the president of the association then and got to know a lot of the community here through that process and became lifelong friends with Ed Wong, who, you know, is very much a leader in the Chinese American community.

TI: But go back to the SYNKOA House, tell me a little bit more. You said you lived there, how many other people lived there, and were they all students? Just give me a flavor of the rhythm of the SYNKOA House after the war.

FS: What it was was it was young students, all students like myself, all Japanese Americans except one guy by the name of Kim from Hawaii who was good friends with a lot of our Hawaiian Japanese American friends. And as you know, at that time, fraternity houses would not accept minorities, and there weren't many places that you could stay on campus. They just didn't have the facilities at that time. They had some for the vets primarily, if I remember right, but I know for me it was either staying at SYNKOA or finding a private place to stay.

TI: So how many stayed there?

FS: You know, I don't remember how many, but I think there were probably twenty, twenty-five of us. And we had a Japanese man who was our cook, he cooked our meals and we managed the place ourselves, paid for the, split the expenses, and that was all thanks to people like Yoshito Fuji, who was one of the people who originally raised funds so that that house could be bought years ago. I can't say enough for those people that got that started at a very critical time when housing just was not available for us.

TI: That's good. And not only housing, but I've heard that it was also kind of a social hub, too. So even Japanese Americans who weren't living there would oftentimes go there and do things.

FS: Oh, yeah. A lot of the commuter students would come and meet there, play cards between breaks, and so forth. It was kind of a social hub for both the women and the men.

TI: When you say both women and men, but only men stayed there, or was it coed?

FS: No, just men there. But the Valedas, the Japanese American women's group, was also formed, and we would have parties, dances, stuff like that.

TI: Now, the Valedas, did they have their own club or place to hang out, or did they hang out at SYNKOA?

FS: You know, I don't know. I don't remember that they had any particular place, but they were an organization that was formed, and we just kind of met together. I don't remember too much about that.

TI: And did the students -- so this was after the war -- and I'm guessing that of the people that would use SYNKOA as a meeting place to either live or just socialize, many of them had been in various different camps, maybe most of probably in Minidoka, but did you and the others ever talk about the camps or the wartime experience or your siblings or your families and the impact of the war?

FS: You know, I don't remember talking too much about that. We just kind of blocked that out, I think. Never really discussed the ramifications of it too much, or the constitutionality of it, or why all this happened. It was just kind of in the past.

TI: How about the faculty or administration at the University of Washington? Because here you had this three-, four-year break where before the war there were literally hundreds of Japanese Americans attending the University of Washington, they disappear, and now you have Japanese Americans coming back after the war. Was there any acknowledgement or comments or any discussion about that during that time period?

FS: None that I'm aware of, none whatsoever. It was completely devoid of any discussion of that type. In fact, the one thing that... it was in later years, but when McCormick was president of the university, I met him at a reception one day, and I told him, "You know, you folks really didn't do much for Japanese Americans or minorities in the past in the way of scholarships, and you really need to step that up." And he acknowledged that they hadn't focused on that enough, but then about a year later he left the university. But I'm happy to say that I think the university has done a much better job in that area. But when I was a student, I could have used a scholarship in the worst way. I worked three jobs while going to school. Can you believe this, Tom? I was a bellhop right here at Fifth and Spring Hotel, I worked as a bookkeeper for a dairy coop, and I also was a reader for the professor. And this was all so that I could have enough money to continue college. I could have used a scholarship in the worst way, but there was no reaching out by the university for something like that at that time. And I told McCormick about that, and I told him, "You guys just really need to do a better job."

TI: How about the other Japanese American students staying at SYNKOA House? How did they afford to stay there and also pay tuition, books, all that? Were they also working jobs like you?

FS: You know, I don't know that anybody was working jobs like me. But like my brother Bob was at SYNKOA, Sam Mitsui, a lot of the guys were vets, and they were on the GI Bill.

TI: So they had money.

FS: Yeah. But I was just right at the tail end of that group, and I didn't have the GI Bill.

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