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BN: Were you--now, I'm not sure what year this is.

SH: Oh, I finished in '74, which turned out to be not a very good year because that year produced a lot of history PhDs who wound up unemployed.

BN: Right. So what I was going to ask you is, at around that time, late '60s, early '70s, there was this kind of blossoming of what became known as the Asian American movement and publications like Gidra and all of that stuff going on -- a lot of it centered at UCLA. I'm wondering if you had any interest, connection, thoughts about what was going on.

SH: No, that was just then beginning to happen. Ironically, when I was a senior, I had very briefly dated Yuji Ichioka.

BN: Wow.

SH: And he went off to Columbia, with the Woodrow Wilson, and I remember getting a letter or two from him; he was very disillusioned there. But then, you know, we didn't keep in touch after that. Although later on, I dated a guy, a Jewish guy, who told me that a Jewish friend of his had gotten really emotionally involved with a gal who eventually married Yuji. What was her name? Emma Gee?

BN: Emma Gee, yes.

SH: And my advisor, Alex Saxton, knew the both of them; he knew Yuji and Emma. But I never crossed paths with him. At one time in 2000 I did a visiting gig at UCLA after I retired. And I always meant to try to look up Yuji at that point, but then when I wasn't teaching classes, I was at my father's board and care because he died not too long after that. So, you know, I just didn't have the time. It would have been an interesting attempt, anyway.

BN: Yeah, yeah. And I think Yuji was also ill at that time.

SH: Yes, he died very young.

BN: He died just a couple years later, yeah.

SH: And in fact, I think I had-- What's the name of the Japanese guy who was in the film studies department? I had his office for a few quarters, Dan?

BN: Bob Nakamura?

SH: Yes, I had his office.

BN: Yeah, oh, okay, yeah. I just saw him a couple weeks ago.

SH: I loved that film of his, you know, that's at JANM? I think that's a wonderful film. I don't know if they're still unspooling it all the time.

BN: Which one?

SH: There is a film--didn't he make a film?

BN: He's made quite a few for JANM, I'm just wondering which one. Is it the prewar silent movie one?

SH: I can't remember now, but I remember seeing a film there that I thought was quite good.

BN: Okay, okay. But anyway, what . . . I was asking originally about your interests or exposure to kind of the whole Asian American Studies stuff, and you mentioned Yuji. But did that pique any interest in you academically or have any influence on you at all? I mean, I know you have written about some Asian American films.

SH: You know, I went to undergraduate and graduate school before there was any such thing as multiculturalism. And so, no, I didn't broach those subjects at all. I did write about DeMille; he made that famous film The Cheat and so I'd written about that film. But I didn't write about Asian American film. And at that time -- this is many years ago now because I've been retired for over twenty-two years -- there weren't that many Asian American films at the time. Now, you know, there's a festival and all sorts of film. But I wasn't involved then. I was not interested in Asian (cinema) or (Asian American cinema). And a gal that I used to know, Gina Marchetti, she wrote about the yellow peril in cinema. And to her credit she explains why she, you know, with Italian American genes was interested in that subject.

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