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SS: And then, so I was in Boston for about two years, and during that time, I decided that I wanted to go back to grad school in public health, and study vectors of disease. So I was debating between Arizona State and UC Berkeley, and I chose UC Berkeley. Unfortunately, they chose me as well, so I got into a PhD program there and immediately started, when I got to campus, I was also kind of... I'd been reading a lot of political things when I was in Boston, but I hadn't really been involved in anything. But I had also been trying to keep up with Asian American movement stuff. So when I got to Berkeley, one of the first things I did was join the Asian Student Union where I met my future wife, Tracy, and got very involved with that. In fact, I got a lot more interested in the Asian American movement and Asian Student Union than I was in my PhD program, so I basically dropped out of that program. My advisor convinced me that, well, you should at least get a master's out of it because you've done all the coursework. So I did get my master's in parasitology. But was more interested in Asian Student Union. Carter was starting the draft, registration up again, so we had a multicultural, multiethnic coalition against the draft, and I was very, ASU, wrapped into that coalition. We were always running over to San Francisco J-Town and Chinatown, because there were gentrification fights and trying to stop evictions, so we would run over and help form picket lines. We would support, I think there was a Japanese warehouse workers' strike. They were trying to unionize so we would go help with the picket lines. Then we'd have political study groups.

BY: So this was around 1978, '79?

SS: Yeah. I got to Berkeley in fall of '78, and I quote/unquote graduated or dropped out, but with a master's in, I guess, June of '81.

BY: And then what happened?

SS: Then my girlfriend at the time, my wife now, also graduated in '81 and got accepted at University of Washington here in Seattle in the education department. So she was going to go to grad school here starting in the fall, so I decided to move with her. So I moved up in summer of '81. I came up like a month before she did, because she had a summer job, I didn't. So I came up with another friend to look for a place to live. And I got here, like, the week before the commission hearings happened at Broadway Performance Hall. So I spent three days sitting through the entire commission hearings and taking photos.

BY: Some viewers may not know what you mean by "commission hearings." Can you explain it?

SS: Yeah. The Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians was a blue ribbon commission set up by Congress in 1980 to examine the removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, and then to write a report on, A, what happened, and B, what remedy if any should be given with recommendations for that. So they held hearings throughout the country in '81 and wrote up the report and submitted it to Congress in '82, and that was the basis for the redress bill that was eventually passed in 1988.

BY: Okay. So you got here in time to witness, observe those hearings.

SS: Yeah.

BY: Okay.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.