Densho Digital Repository - Hubert Yoshida Interview (Densho ID: ddr-densho-1000-506-20)

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TI: Okay, let's move to, you graduate from high school, and what happens next? I guess when you're going through high school, was college kind of like a natural next step for you? Or when you graduated from high school, were there other paths that you might have taken?

HY: Oh, it was just, my dad had been to Berkeley and it's just a natural thing that I was going to go to Berkeley.

TI: So your uncle Kenji didn't try to get you go to Stanford? [Laughs]

HY: [Laughs] No. In fact, his son David went to Berkeley.

TI: Oh, that must have broken his heart.

HY: And, you know, I didn't think it was so hard to get into college. You know how today they take SATs and they do all this, and you have to have a 4.0 plus. I don't remember any of that. We just sort of graduate and went to Berkeley.

TI: Because your brother, older brother went to Berkeley?

HY: He went to Berkeley as well. My cousin David went to Berkeley, Larry went to Berkeley. It didn't seem to be that big a deal to go to university in those days.

TI: Well, and I guess for people who are viewing this who are younger, tuition was incredibly...

HY: Yeah, I think it was fifty dollars a unit. In fact, that's one of the biggest bargains of my life, it cost me nothing to go to university. I worked as a houseboy, a Japanese houseboy, for a lady who was the widow of the chemistry department, Olmstead, Dr. Olmstead. So I worked for her as a Japanese houseboy for two years, and I had a free room. I hashed at a boarding house and I had a small scholarship so I didn't have to pay for books, tuition. So it was in summers, my dad... I'd work on the farm, my dad would pay me a little bit, so I'd have spending money. So it was nothing like today, people go into hundreds of dollars of debt.

TI: Hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt, yeah.

HY: Hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt just to go to university. I don't know, it was just so... maybe people didn't, of course, I worked, but then the work was not really that onerous.