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BN: Now, I know you went to UCLA, and did all your siblings also?

SH: Yes, you know there was no 10 then so commuting to UCLA from where we lived was…. And I have to thank my father for that. He bought a car so that I could commute to and from UCLA. Thank God there was no tuition then; even there was no tuition when I was a grad student when I was signing loan papers like crazy. But, yeah, we went to UCLA, all three of us. And you know something? I thought that that's what you did in LA. I thought, oh, when you got out of high school, did you…. Well, actually, no, you didn't. I was kind of surprised to find out my mother's friends' daughters, they didn't go. Why did they wind up at a Cal State school? What's that about? You know, I mean back then it wasn't that hard to get in so I just assumed that everybody…. But then if you think about how many people were actually college-educated back in the '60s, I think my parents accomplished a great deal on very little money.

BN: Yeah, that was going to be my question . . . as you're growing up, was there just this expectation that you were just going to go to college?

SH: There wasn't just an expectation, there was just an assumption. And, in fact, my mother always read people extremely well. She was very excited -- my sister became a psychotherapist. But anyway, aside from questioning your morals, the worst thing my mother could say about you was, "You weren't educated." The worst thing: "Well, she has no education."

BN: Did they steer you in any particular direction in terms of, you know, you're going to major in this or that?

SH: No. And, in fact, I wasn't steering myself very well, you know. I was in English and history, you know, and at times I wondered, "Well, why was I studying those subjects?" And they led you straight into a teaching credential, and I taught for a year or two before I realized, "Well, this isn't for me." But I wanted to travel so I taught for four years, and I traveled in Europe and had one of the best summers of my entire life running around on a Eurail pass or whatever. And then the summer after that, I went to the Orient and I met my mother's family. Then I went to grad school.

BN: What did you end up majoring in?

SH: I ended up being a history major.

BN: As an undergrad?

SH: Yeah, but I was also -- I was also a French minor and an English minor. I could have gone in any of those directions, really.

BN: Were you involved in other kinds of activities on campus with clubs?

SH: No, I was not.

BN: And you commuted. Did you commute the whole time?

SH: Yes, I commuted the whole time. And so that took up a lot of . . . and then in my senior year, I had a job as a PBX operator on the weekend. So, no, I wasn't active in any organizations, etc. However, in -- I forget what year this was in -- in my sophomore year or so I started to date this Jewish guy, Don Heitzer, who later became an AD and a production manager. And I started going around with this Jewish club, and that was just totally unlike kids that I had known because they just -- I don't know -- they just had a lot more money and a lot more unconcern and freedom. And Don was into films, and so then I was going with him and his friends to Fellini, Bergman, Kurosawa, etc., and that's how I got into films, and so that became my interest.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.