<Begin Segment 18>

BN: And then you mentioned you started school?

RM: I was in high school, yeah, Commerce High School, that's downtown. That's why it was a multiracial school, lot of Chinese, lot of Italians. I had one Yugoslavian, Branislav Yaich, I remember his name. [Laughs] He was a football player.

BN: And then you told kind of a funny story about your father kind of telling you what you were going to study in college?

RM: Oh, yeah. When I was a junior, he told me, "What are you going to be when you grow up? What are you going to do?" I said, "I don't know." "Well," he said, "why don't you be a pharmacist?" I said, "Well, okay." Never been in a pharmacy, I mean, I never knew what a pharmacist did, I've never seen what he did. I've been in a drugstore, I've bought candy and things like that in a drugstore, but I never bought any medicine in a drugstore or anything like that. So I started Berkeley, because pharmacy school was in San Francisco, but they send you to Berkeley to take all your pre-pharmacy courses and eliminate you, actually. In fact, I had two friends who were going to be in pharmacy but they dropped out because they couldn't make it to either. But also we took ROTC. It was required because it was a state... what was that called? Anyway, ROTC was required, so we took ROTC. And I didn't continue after, I only took two years. I should have continued four years, I would have been an officer, but I only took it two years. But I got a B average, but that wasn't good enough. You're competing in physics with physics majors and you're competing in chemistry with chemistry majors and other... I can't remember now. So anyway, I didn't make it, and so I decided that I should transfer to a school that would accept me.

So I went up to Oregon State to see how that would be, but it was too rainy for me. Now, I knew Salt Lake City, so I said, well, maybe I'll go to Salt Lake City. And it didn't dawn on me that it snows up there. But I bought a car the second year I guess, while I was up at Utah, University of Utah. I had a car, I bought a 1950 Chevrolet with money that I had saved working for my uncle on his farm. And so I was very popular because I was the only one that had a car. But when we first went up there, I had the dorm, it was Fort Douglas, so the university had the Fort Douglas handed over to them, I guess. And so we lived in the barracks, so here we are back in the barracks. [Laughs] I lived in the barracks. That summer when I came home, I heard lightning hit that barrack. And then the second year when I went back, I got a different room, I got the hospital for the fort. So this was a nice building, a real big, it's a hospital, so it was a nice room, private room, and nice room, so it was very nice. Other people had adjoining wooden buildings, so they were not as comfortable.

But we had a lot of athletes up there, athletes that stayed up there in the barracks in the dorms. So we had a lot of contact with them. In fact, we played intermural basketball, and the football players played intermural basketball, and I was guarding this great big 250-pound, six feet two or six feet four, a football player, I'm guarding him. I couldn't guard him, but I was faster than him, so I could get around him. But if the ball went over my head, he'd get the ball but I couldn't touch him. So I also played basketball in the Nisei league there, and we heard that there was an all-star from Idaho, a Japanese American coming to play there by the name of Yosh Hirai from Idaho State. He's from Idaho Falls. So a Gen Mizutani, who was my best friend, who I met at the university there, we were doing everything together. So we hustled over to see him right away to recruit him for our basketball team. And Yosh at one time in high school scored sixty points in one game, so he was a real good basketball player. And so we played basketball, and they had an annual tournament, Salt Lake had a basketball tournament, and they used to recruit, not recruit, but have teams from L.A. come up to play. So we had people like Kaz Shinsato and who was that other basketball player that played for SC? Anyway, they came to play and we had teams from San Francisco, and the Chinese team, the Saints from San Francisco come and play. We had a team from San Jose, and we had a Greek team from Salt Lake City, all six-feet players. But the San Jose, San Francisco States always win. They were really good, they used to play, what do you call it... anyway, they were real good. When they came to play, I knew half the players because I went to high school with them. Most of them were from Commerce High. So I knew some of them, so it was a nice reunion.

BN: Then by this time, had you warmed up to pharmacy?

RM: Yeah, okay. When the junior, I can't remember, or senior year, our pharmacy school actually took a train to the pharmaceutical manufacturing companies back east, from Salt Lake. So we went to Detroit to Eli Lilly, we went to Park Davis, we went to Walgreen, and I can't remember where else. But on the train, for instance, it was on a Sunday, it's funny because most of these pharmacy students from Salt Lake were Mormons. Well, they don't drink anything stimulant. So they don't drink coffee, they'll drink milk or water. So they don't drink... so we go to a banquet, and they drink water, and here we're drinking coffee. And they don't drink any hard liquor or anything like that. It was kind of strange, but we had a good trip, had a nice time, learned about manufacturing companies, see how they make the medicines. So then I graduated in 1954, and I stayed to take the state board and my folks went back home.

BN: This is the State Board of Utah?

RM: Utah, I took the state board. And then after I took that state board, I went to California, came back to take the California State Board. But since I didn't have the experience, I couldn't take the practical exam of the State Board of California, so I couldn't get registered until I finished that one part, which I got when I was in the army. So I couldn't get a job, it was hard to get a job. I came home and looked for a job, but I couldn't get a job anyplace. Finally, I got a job in Vallejo -- you know, Vallejo is north of San Francisco on the East Bay side -- with Kaiser where the shipyard was out there, Kaiser. And a Japanese American was the head of the pharmacy there, he hired me. It only lasted a couple of months because I got drafted. But I had to drive San Francisco through the Golden Gate Bridge, and then the Richmond Bridge to get to Vallejo, so it was a long ways, but I had a job there temporarily. Then I got drafted and I was supposed to report in the beginning of December. December I was supposed to...

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