<Begin Segment 21>

TI: Well, so let's talk about going to Berkeley. Well, first let's talk about what you studied. So what did you study at Berkeley?

HY: I started in English because I loved reading and doing all that. But then Sputnik went up and then I thought, "Well, I'll go into engineering and physics." So I went into physics and was majoring in physics.

TI: Just a comment. I mean, that's not an easy pivot for people. I mean, sort of English literature versus physics, for most campuses, those are almost like opposites in terms of who... and so when you think of who you are as a person, do you think of yourself more as an English literature person or more of a physics type of person?

HY: I think more of an English literature person. I don't know why, I just thought, well, I can do more as an engineer or a physicist and so I changed my major. But from there it was kind of like a... oh, you remember the movie Forrest Gump?

TI: Yeah.

HY: How things just sort of happened to him through history? I mean, so I was a houseboy, and I would have a free room and all I had to do was clean the house on Saturday mornings and serve dinner, she would always have dinner parties in the evening. And I had a white coat and she'd ring a silver bell and I'd come in and serve things. And in those days, I guess the idea about Japanese houseboy doesn't sound that weird now. But because of that, she had many guests who were pretty prominent in academia and so forth. And one of them happened to talk to me, and I told him I was majoring in physics at that time. So he said, "Why don't you work at the radiation lab?" Berkeley had a Bevatron at that time. And so I started working there and I became a lab rat, they would call it, to Dr. Luis Alvarez. And Dr. Alvarez, of course, is a Nobel Prize winner, and he was doing meson research at that time. So I worked in his lab, and then I started to work on the IBM computers there and processing his bubble chamber data every night, and so I was working at night. So I got to know Dr. Luis Alvarez, and I thought I had a career now, I knew somebody in physics. But then John Kennedy came and visited the lab. And he came and I was just... his speech about, "Ask not what the country can do for you, but what you can do for the country." And so that inspired me. And I remember seeing him, and I swear, he looked at me, you know, eye contact and so forth, because I was at the rad lab then. And I don't know. I thought then that I need to do something for the country. I need to do something more than just go to school and have a good salary and so forth. And so I read all those books, Ugly American and all that, Burdick and so forth. And so I wanted to do something for the country, not just go to school. And so that's when I decided I wanted to join the Marine Corps, be an officer in the Marine Corps.

TI: Because you were pretty close to graduating, or had you already graduated?

HY: Well, I was in this phase where I was going to graduate, I was ready to graduate, I was doing this work at the rad lab, working at nights. And so all of a sudden I decided I wanted to become a Marine Corps officer. So I cut short my education, I already had enough for a math degree, so I took a math degree, and applied for OCS.

TI: And before we go there -- we are going to go there -- but when you say you're a "lab rat," you mentioned IBM computers and running programs, were you actually programming also?

HY: No, I was an operator.

TI: Okay, so it was just like you would get the cards and you would run it through the machine?

HY: [Laughs] Yeah, cards, and I'd get tapes from the bubble chamber, and those tapes were digitized by hand. And I would set up the whole thing and run that all night long, and then get the reports out for Dr. Alvarez and his group in the morning.

TI: I see, okay. Okay, so you graduate with the... and so the reason you have a mathematics degree is because you cut short your physics. If you had continued, you would have been a physics...

HY: Yeah, my parents were very disappointed in my decision because they wanted me to go on to graduate school.

TI: And be a physicist. I mean, that was probably like rocket scientist back then.

HY: Yeah. That's why I did it, because I wanted to become something like a rocket scientist. It wasn't because I loved physics.

TI: You actually wanted to be an English... that's why I'm glad I asked that question, like, who are you more? An English lit person or a physicist, and in your heart it was more English literature.

HY: But you know, it's inspiring. If you ever met anybody like a Dr. Luis Alvarez, they're another species of people, right? I mean, at that time he did not have a Nobel Prize, but he was brilliant and he was a concert pianist, he was a top notch golfer, I mean, everything he did very well. In fact, he had also flown in, not in the Enola Gay, but in an observation plane during the bombing of Hiroshima.

TI: Wow.

HY: So he, I remember he had written a letter to his son about that experience.

TI: So was he part of the Manhattan Project?

HY: Yes, I guess he was. Because he flew as an observer in the plane that followed the Enola Gay. He was a person of history; somehow I touched history in being able to know him.

TI: Well, when you were making this decision to join the Marines, did you ever have an opportunity to talk to him about your decision?

HY: No.

TI: So you didn't say, "Dr. Alvarez, I'm going to drop out of physics and I'm going to go become a Marine. Any advice?" [Laughs]

HY: No, no. I think he did not, but one of his associates tried to talk me out of it because they needed somebody to run the computers at night.

TI: But more than that, they probably questioned that direction for you at that time.

HY: Yeah. My parents certainly did. I didn't tell them until after...

TI: Well, and before we go on to your military career, this is at a time you're on a Berkeley campus...

HY: Oh yeah, it was in turmoil.

TI: ...where things are, yeah, I mean...

HY: I mean, there was the Free Speech Movement going on, Mario Savio, so that was part of the history that was going on at that time, and it was very disruptive.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.