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BN: Okay, so we should move ahead now. So yeah, a lot of the rest of your early life, UCLA period and so forth, was covered in a prior interview. So we're going to kind of skip ahead to the Gidra period. But before we do that, I just wanted to get some chronology. So what years were you at UCLA as an undergrad?

MM: Okay. I graduated from L.A. High in 1964, started UCLA as a freshman, fall of 1964, and I was there as an undergrad until 1970, for six years. And the reason for that was I was trying to dodge the draft, or take advantage of my student deferment. And because in those days, the Vietnam War was going on, and the system was, they had a draft system based on a lottery. The lottery was designed so that all the days of the year, from January 1 to December 31st, would be assigned a number based on chance. And so my birthday came up 55 out of 365, so I felt that that's fairly early and I could be drafted at any time. So I decided I didn't want to go to Vietnam, didn't want to fight that war, and so I stayed in school. And then I spent one more year at UCLA as a graduate student in the film school, ethnocommunications. So I was there from '64 to '71.

BN: But you graduated in '70?

MM: Yes.

BN: So this is overlapping, kind of, with the Gidra period.

MM: Right.

BN: And then when did you start law school then?

MM: '72.

BN: So fall of '72?

MM: Yeah.

BN: Okay. So that kind of also coincided...

MM: This is kind of typical, too, because I went to film school. And I had good reasons for it, but it was a two-year program, but I kind of quit in the middle to go to law school. So there's instances of many things that I didn't finish.

BN: Okay, no, this is good. I'll probably return to asking questions about that as it comes up during the Gidra period.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.