<Begin Segment 7>

BY: Okay, I want to ask you some questions about your schooling, your school experiences. So what schools did you attend?

KY: In primary or...

BY: All the way through.

KY: All the way through?

BY: Yeah.

KY: Okay. Elementary school is Oakbrook Elementary School, Hudtloff Junior High, and Lakes High School. And then for college, I went to the University of Washington.

BY: Okay. And for your K-12 schools, what was the racial and ethnic makeup of those? Was it like your neighborhood or a little different?

KY: Pretty much it was the same as the neighborhood. Pretty much ninety percent white and then everything else.

BY: Okay. And did you ever go to Japanese language school?

KY: No.

BY: Do you recall anybody ever talking about that, or was just...

KY: Going to language school?

BY: Yeah, whether you should go or not.

KY: No, you know, at the time, the emphasis was on blending in. Japanese was spoken at home, and sometimes we would speak Japanese in public if we didn't want other people to know what we were talking about. [Laughs] But that was not a language that was emphasized.

BY: So it's interesting that you say that Japanese was spoken at home, so I think that's unusual for Sansei. Is that because your grandparents lived with you?

KY: Uh-huh.

BY: And so do you speak Japanese?

KY: A little bit. You know, I'd come to find out it's more like baby talk and very countrified and Meiji-era. So it's old, outdated, and not appropriate for modern conversation. [Laughs]

BY: Interesting, that's funny.

KY: Well, it's because my grandparents talked to me.

BY: They're the ones who you learned from, yeah. Okay. So you said that you went to University of Washington. And what did you major in?

KY: Psychology.

BY: Okay, and thinking back to your college years, you were a psychology major, what other activities, or were there clubs or organizations that you took part in at all?

KY: I tried. Actually, I tried to get into the, what do you call it, EOP program through the Office of Minority Affairs. But because I was admitted as a regular student, I was not able to access some of the extra help that, say, EOP students might receive. I also tried the Japanese Student Association but I struck out there, too. Because it turns out that the club was primarily for international students, so I didn't quite fit in.

BY: Because you were Japanese American?

KY: Yes. [Laughs]

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