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AN: Then you mentioned that after that you went to Venice.

AN: Went to Venice High, and that was where I dramatically changed. And the story is, in junior high, I was just blown away by the culture shock of, you know, we'd grown up in this little bubble with friends, we didn't know any better. And then in junior high, I remember getting invited to a classmate's bat mitzvah, and that was my exposure to a whole other class. Because she lived in Cheviot Hills, my dad dropped me off for this party in his gardening truck. We had to go up these stairs, they had a maid that greeted us. And that just kind of blew me away to experience that kind of lifestyle, because we were just not used to that. But I was very shy in junior high school, I just kind of tried to be under the radar in doing things, and was making this transition from hanging out with the project kids to figuring out the next thing. And then in the ninth grade, this was when junior high was three years, we had voted most likely to succeed and all those things. So I was voted shyest of my class. And that really was kind of... I was embarrassed, because this was for real. This wasn't like just a joke kind of thing. So then that summer, from junior high school to high school, I kind of sat down and told myself... because most of the kids from junior high went to another high school, and only a small portion of the project kids went to Venice High. So I said I was going to really change, and so I just consciously made a decision. And so when I started high school, I was just this awful guy. I would just be very friendly, going up to people, talking to people, and say, "What's your name? Blah-blah-blah." And so by the end of the second semester I was voted class representative, and kind of went through the whole social scene in high school and was senior class president. So high school was just kind of an awful time. I hated high school. I mean, I did all... because I just had lunch with some high school friends, and they said, "You seemed like you were just, had good grades," and I said, "I hated high school. It was an awful time for me, and my grades were not that good." And so that was kind of how I transformed myself in high school.

And then was fortunate to get into UCLA out of high school, my grades were quite marginal. But I was in these classes with other relatively smart kids, and so one of my friends said, "We're taking the PSAT," and I said, "What's the PSAT?" So they signed up for that, I took the PSAT, I did relatively well on that, so then I was encouraged to take the SAT. I took the SAT, did very well on that. My grades were, I was like a C+ student. I wasn't even a 3.0 student, because I remember there was some kind of honor society and I wasn't eligible to apply because I didn't have a 3.0. But I got admitted to UCLA, and my high school counselor -- and this was the best advice I ever got -- she said, "I don't know how you got admitted to UCLA, but if I were you, I would go start at community college or join the military." She goes, "Because you'll probably flunk out after one year, because you're not academically prepared to do it." So I said, "Okay." Then I kind of told myself, I said, "I don't know how I got admitted either," because I didn't see myself as a particularly smart student. So I was scared to death that I was going to flunk out after a year, so I just studied for goodness, to try to stay aboard. Because I was not academically prepared. And after my first year at UCLA, I was so thankful, I came out with a 2.2 GPA, and I said, "Yes, I made it through the first year." And then transferred to Berkeley.

AN: Regarding Venice High, what were the demographics like there? Who were your friend groups?

AN: Well, that's the thing. Where I grew up, most of them were some of the kids from the projects, but I started losing touch with them because we were tracked in different classes. And so the kids that I went through junior high school, we were not in the same classes together. And then I remember just keeping up with them a little bit later and finding out what happened to some. One died in the Vietnam War, another one died of an OD, another one was imprisoned, two of them became police officers. And so we kind of tracked that side. But I started hanging out primarily with white folks, because they were the ones that were active in student government and in the service clubs, and I had this whole vision. I mean, I was such a shallow guy. In high school, every day you'd wear these service club sweaters that you'd wear to kind of show you're an Usher or Esquires. And so my goal was to have a different sweater for every day that I could wear. So a letterman's sweater, Usher sweater, so I was awful. There's someone that I keep in touch with, his name is Mark Mayeda, I don't know if you know Mark, but he's married to Debbie Ching. Mark's father was the minister that used to go to Manzanar every year. And so Mark went to Venice at the same time, and he kind of agreed. He said, "Yeah, you were just seen as this kind of whitewashed soc guy who'd hang around." And he's right. So anyway, high school was not fun, but I was able to get through it.

And kind of started at UCLA as a math major, because math was one of the only classes that I got decent grades in. And I'd get A's in math, B's and C's in English, C's in science, and so that was kind of how it all mushed together. Fortunately, after my first year at UCLA, I had an older sister who was at ULCA and she said, from her own experience, she goes, "You have to leave UCLA, because you're gonna just commute to school and hang out with other folks from the neighborhood," etcetera. So she encouraged me to apply to Cal, so I applied to Cal my next year and was accepted. And that just was where life dramatically changed for me. Because my first semester was the Free Speech Movement, and after that, I changed my major and I developed a certain sense of self confidence and moved forward from there. And that's where I met Yvonne, my first semester, so she was one of the first people I met when I went to Cal, so it was a great time.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2018 Densho. All Rights Reserved.