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BN: So you now graduate high school in Otis Orchards. Was that the name of the high school?

BS: Yeah.

BN: Then you go on to Berkeley. What was that like for you? You had envisioned this place.

BS: Yeah, it was interesting because, like I say, I never knew very much about higher education, and I didn't apply to anyplace other than UC Berkeley. I didn't know Berkeley was supposed to be that hard to get into. But I remember having to take a, I think it was sort of an early SAT exam, and I remember my principal administering that to me one weekend. And he said, "Here's a test, you go take it," and he had me go into a room, take the test, and then I tried to get through it as quick as I could, I didn't know what the significance of it was. But apparently I did very well with it, because they admitted me to UC Berkeley. And so I went down there to join my brother and sister. We rented an apartment together, my brother and I, but we also boarded at a place called Euclid Hall, which was an all-Japanese dormitory. In fact, we had a reunion of people who had gone to Euclid Hall about two years ago, and I've learned that Euclid Hall was established because Japanese Americans were not able to get into any of the university dormitories or any other residential areas. And there was widespread discrimination against them from even renting apartments, I think. And so Euclid Hall was purchased by a group of Japanese American parents of these students because they couldn't get housing otherwise. And that's how Euclid Hall was established. I don't know if it's still... at that reunion we took a tour of Euclid Hall. I don't remember whether it was still under the same ownership or not.

BN: But at the time you were there, was it still, was that still the situation?

BS: Yeah, right. In fact, I had a number of instances of discrimination when I was looking for housing over the years. We would drive around the area around Berkeley to look for For Rent signs, and when we saw one, we would go up and see if we could rent that (apartment). They usually would say, "Oh, I'm sorry, we just rented that place." Then we would come back a day later and the same sign would be up there, For Rent. I remember, in fact, renting a place, the manager had said I could have this apartment, which was fairly close to campus, so I was very happy about that. And I told her I'd come back the next day with the deposit, but when I came back the next day, she said, "I'm sorry, I can't rent this apartment to you after all, because the owner does not want Japanese Americans living here." I mean, they were very (upfront) about it. In fact, it was so widespread that a black legislator from California, (William) Rumford, had an act passed that prohibited that kind of discrimination, but that was overturned by initiative. And it wasn't until the courts finally intervened and said there should be no discrimination on housing. But that was the experience that we had as students there.

BN: How were your classes and so forth? Did you go in knowing what you wanted to study?

BS: Yeah, I wanted to major in engineering but I had to take some mathematics courses first which were not offered at my high school. And so I had to take those before I would be admitted into the engineering program. The one thing I remember was taking a Speech 1-A class, which had about twenty-five or thirty students in it. And the teaching assistant who was teaching the class told us at the beginning that all of us were going to have to give a ten minute speech near the end of the semester. And that speech could be on anything related to education. And for some reason, I decided I would write my speech on education in the camps. And so I started doing research on it, I mentioned to you earlier, at the Bancroft library, and I was overwhelmed with the amount of material they had, because I learned later that they had the largest collection of materials on the Japanese internment of any library in the world. But the more I read these materials, the angrier I got because I finally discovered how outrageously violated our constitutional rights were when we were put in those camps. When I gave the speech, I was pretty (angry so my speech was pretty) hard-hitting, (...) and it was about ten minutes long, in fact, I still have a copy of that speech. And the instructor asked at the end of my talk, "Are there any questions?" Dead silence. And then he asked, "How many of you knew this even happened?" And there was (only) one student who raised (his) hand, and he was another Japanese American who had been in the camps. And so it really taught me something. It taught me how ignorant people were about this thing that happened, even though it was only about ten years after the event occurred. And so I remember that incident vividly over the years. That probably is what got me involved in civil rights.

BN: What was your grade?

BS: Grade was A for the speech and B for reading the speech instead of giving it by memory.

BN: At Berkeley, you mentioned you lived in this Japanese American housing situation. Were most of your friends also other Nisei or Sansei?

BS: Yeah, I would say so. The vast majority.

BN: And then did you work also?

BS: Yeah, I tried to work because my parents couldn't afford everything. And I did all kinds of things, cleaning houses, cleaning apartments. I even worked for a moving company once.

BN: And then how many years did you go there?

BS: I went there altogether first for four years, and then I was out for a year going to Japan, I was working for the navy, and learned that they sent a crew to Japan every so often, and they had a crew there at the time I was working as a summer job. And I extended that for a year in order to maybe go to Japan. And then I took another year to finish up after I came back, then I went on to get a master's degree.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2018 Densho. All Rights Reserved.