<Begin Segment 18>

BN: And then you graduated what year? What year did you graduate?

FS: Well, okay. My whole recollection of graduation, because I marched through that, something "land of glory," three times in the Rose Bowl. Can you imagine? Junior high school I graduated there, and we did the same thing. High school I graduated in the Rose Bowl, same thing. And then community college I graduated in the Rose Bowl, same thing. So kind of tired of that. [Laughs] Yeah, I can relate to the Rose Bowl.

BT: What year was that, though, when you graduated?

FS: Oh, I graduated in 1952 from community college. High school was 1950.

BN: And then from there you went to Berkeley just for a year and then you went into the army, right?

FS: Right. I think the transition, I guess I knew the word architect only because I think one of the guys was a tennis player ahead of me and he became, he was a pretty good tennis player at PCC, I think, but he was a year or two ahead of me. And then he went to college, and I don't remember where. Might have been SC, but became an architect. So I knew about the field. And the tragedy, of course, too, is that he was a designer for a big company in Los Angeles and he committed suicide. So I don't know that whole story. I only knew him as a tennis player. So at PCC, I think they knew I had drawing skills. I guess I did okay in math, that was the old stereotype of somebody goes into the field. And so I guess I was sort of persuaded to continue that field. And that's how I ended up going to Berkeley, because I couldn't afford USC. And of course, my mother was happy I was going to go to college, yeah, all that. But I had that nice black car that I could go to Berkeley, and she let me have the car up there. I could be big man on campus of the Japanese side, Euclid Hall at Berkeley, and become part of that world up there.

BT: By that time, your mom was able to drive?

FS: I don't know if she was driving, I don't think so, no, no. I think she went back to her method of suffering for her son. Yeah, there's a lot I owe my parents, I think, obviously. And I'm very aware of that. And on that subject, some of my anger is based on the fact that it took two people to sacrifice their lives even though I was the glue. You see, that's the irony of this whole thing of their marriage fifteen years apart, and not really one that was developed out of love. It was created so that there could be an offspring, and it turned out to be a male which, of course, from the one side, the samurai side, is fit. And my mother was trained in a way that she could perform her duties. Yeah, so I had, it was still the... maybe it took me longer to grow up because of that. I was always encouraged to pursue a degree like Asians are, but allowed to still be free. And it was another experience up there. Because I made a lot of good friends in that one year that I was there. Euclid Hall, it was a special place, and a lot of successful stories out of that group.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.