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BY: Okay, let's move on to college. So what college, university did you attend?

SM: University of Washington.

BY: Okay. And what did you do in college? So I assume you had a major and you did activities. What kinds of things were you involved in in college?

SM: Well, I started in architecture school, and the sexism was so great by the professors, that I thought, I'm not paying tuition to be insulted every day. So I transferred to the school of art, and I got my degree in art education.

BY: And what, again, extracurricular things were you involved in?

SM: Well, again, I majored in activities. [Laughs] I was involved in the mock political convention, the model congress, model UN, I was involved in all of those kind of political policy kind of things. And I ran successfully for the board of the control, which is like the student government. And I was also, like, on the publications board, which ironically, didn't fit at the time, but then I had most of my career in communications, but I didn't realize it at the time.

BY: So what do you feel like? What were the seeds of that political activism or your involvement in, what was it, do you think? Was it just your nature, was there something in your background that made you interested in that? What inspired that in you?

SM: Well, you know, some people looked up to rock stars and I looked up to political figures that I thought were doing something important. And part of it was influenced by the fact that one of our neighbors was a state representative, and his father was a secretary of state for the state of Washington. So they had political things all the time. They were in the upper echelon of the Democratic party, and so since my parents were the only other Democrats on the street, they would get invited. We would, as a family, would get invited to various things. So we met the Kennedys when they came to town and things like that. And I started doorbelling for him, Vic Meyers, Jr. was his name. I started doorbelling for him when I was fourteen and I would go around with him. Even back then, they didn't let fourteen-year-olds do doorbelling on their own, so I always went with him. And his own kids who were our classmates were not particularly interested at all, but I was fascinated by all this stuff. And so I would go with him and I'd hand out the literature and whatever, and I loved it.

BY: Were your parents, I mean, you said that they would get invited to these things, were they politically active, would you say?

SM: Well, they voted Democratic, but they were not active. I mean, they didn't join the Democratic club or anything like that.

BY: And were they involved in any Japanese American organizations like the JACL or the Nisei Vets or anything like that?

SM: Well, in Portland, Dad was president of the JACL one year. They were members in Seattle and they went to the annual banquets and the fundraisers and things like that, but they were not active, per se.

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