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VY: Okay. So after your time there, did you come back to the States?

MK: Yes. I served two years. I had two chiefs, one of them retired, and so my second chief wanted me to stay, but I said I had to go about this time, so I left in 1962, August, and came back to Seattle. And found work... let's see, where did I work then? That was in the '60s.

VY: When did you decide to become a teacher?

MK: Oh, 1968 and '69, I do recall now, I worked at the Seattle Art Museum as secretary to the second boss. And when Seattle Community College opened in 1966, I thought, oh, that might be something I would like to try. Because it was not a four-year university, and I wanted to see what it was like. And so I had a talk with my younger brother, and he thought that would be a good idea, so he encouraged me and I started. And I was the oldest in my class, of course, and the instructor was fresh out of Gonzaga University. And I think he had a degree in teaching college. And so he took me aside one day and we had to write a paper. And he noticed the way I punctuated and used marks that the other, younger, just recently graduated high school students were not using. And I said, "Oh, yeah, well, it's my experience working in an office." I had all that behind me, so I knew where the punctuations would go and all that, that was an interesting conversation. And I went there two years, it was a two-year college, but I just kept going and going and going, because I was not thinking of even transferring to a four-year university. Until one day the dean called me in and said that I had more than enough credits to transfer. So I thought he was giving me a message that, "You've got to go." And I, again, discussed the situation with my brother, and he thought that would be another good idea. And he lent me some money to get started, and I paid it back eventually. But the first year that I had been accepted, in 1970, one of the requirements was having to swim that long swimming pool. And it didn't make any sense to me why that would be a requirement, to gain admission.

VY: Oh, to gain admission, you had to swim an Olympic-sized...

MK: Yeah, that was a requirement. And I thought, oh, there I am, I'll never gain admission. But then they dropped that requirement, and I thought, whew, I guess I have one step in. And then I thought, well, I have to declare a major, and I had no clue, and I thought, oh, I enjoyed home-ec while I was in middle school, so I thought I'd major in home-ec. And before I was able to declare the major, they dropped the whole department, they closed it up. And so I thought, now what will I do, after I did my two years? And I thought, well, like we say in Japanese, "Shikata ga nai," there's no way out. So I declared the teaching. And I thought, well, I'll never be a teacher, but I had to declare something to get a degree to graduate anyway. But after I went my full four years, I thought, well, I may as well go for my fifth year just to complete that requirement. And now that I had the certificate for teaching secondary level, I thought, well, then I'd better go into the classroom, so that's how I became a teacher.

VY: What grades did you teach, then, after that?

MK: I taught both middle school and high school.

VY: And what did you teach?

MK: ESL, English as a Second Language, and Japanese. And in English as a Second Language I covered language arts and world history.

VY: So that means that some of your students did not speak English as a first language, so what language was their first language?

MK: Well, they came from different countries: Africa, Latin America. But by the time they got to middle school, they were able to speak. And there was one interesting thing that happened in one of my classes, ESL classes. One of the boys from Africa, they had to submit a written paper, and I gave an example on what to write so that they'll know just what it was about. When I got his paper, I marked, "Why, why, why?" In fact, he was so upset, he came to me and asked me, "Why all the whys?" And so I said, "Okay, now, if I give you an example like this: I'm writing to you and I invite you to Seattle, to come and visit Seattle, you're going to enjoy it, and you're going to meet a lot of friends, what does that tell you about Seattle?" And then he understood, "Why. I have to fill in, Seattle is such a beautiful city, and there's green trees all over the place, and we have sometimes snow in the winter, and the springtime is beautiful," all the description about the city. Then he understood. That was a teaching moment for me, too.

VY: Did you keep in touch with any of your students later?

MK: Just for a little while. And, of course, they went their own way. They went off to college or got married, and then they were busy with their family life.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2018 Densho. All Rights Reserved.