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TI: So let's jump to, after you graduate, you decide to go to the University of Washington in Seattle. Why the University of Washington?

JS: Well, I could afford it. [Laughs] I was paying my own way and I was accepted to the University of Washington and I said, well, okay, my parents were both from Washington. And then I thought, well, in that case, maybe I can get to be a resident and pay resident tuition. Because my father was active duty in the military and they were really from Washington, my grandparents lived there, my uncle and my aunt lived there, I thought, well, I can do that. That lasted for about thirty days after I got there, and then the university found out that I was only seventeen and they said, "You can't be a resident because you're a resident of wherever your parents live."

TI: Oh, okay. But then when you turned eighteen, did they make you a resident there?

JS: Yeah, I turned around and went back and said, "I'm here, I'm paying my own way, and I should be a resident."

TI: The people back in Washington will want me to ask this question. Why not Wazzu instead?

JS: Moo U, you mean?

TI: What's that?

JS: Moo U.

TI: Moo U, yeah. [Laughs] Yeah, you're a true Husky. But your family was in Eastern Washington, Spokane, and so did you consider Washington State?

JS: No, I did not.

TI: We won't go into the Cougar-Husky conflict there. I really want to get to your time in the White House, but I just wanted to talk about this. But one more question about the UW, what did you major in, and in some ways, what were you thinking in terms of career, and because oftentimes, the degree you get determines what you do later.

JS: Well, I was going to be a dentist.

TI: [Laughs] You surprised me with this one. I know what you ended up with, I wasn't expecting that. So you were going to be a dentist.

JS: That was my plan. And I got to organic chemistry, and I said, "Well, I'm not going to be a dentist." Besides that, I couldn't meet any of the manual dexterity tests that they gave us, and that's when I sort of switched.

TI: Oh, so you were essentially a pre-dent.

JS: Pre-dent.

TI: And it was organic chemistry. So it's funny, I actually, my degree is in chemistry and chemical engineering, so I actually thrived in that, those organic chemistry labs, I loved that.

JS: Everybody's a chemist.

TI: [Laughs] Well, who else is a chemist?

JS: We have a PhD, or doctor of chemistry is a next door neighbor. She's a professor over at the university here in Nevada.

TI: Well, as a fellow chemist, she must be very interesting. [Laughs]

JS: Oh, yeah, she's very interesting.

TI: We like to see how things get all mixed together. But any other stories you want to talk about from the University of Washington, and in particular if there's anything that you did with Asian Americans or anything like that? Can you remember any?

JS: Well, after I quit pre-dent, then I went into political science and I had an awful lot of courses in the Far East department, and graduated eventually in political science.

TI: So you went from -- this is a UW thing -- so you went from the lower campus up to the quad or upper campus.

JS: Right. Where you could take art and things like that. [Laughs]

TI: It was much prettier, they had the cherry trees in the spring, just gorgeous up there.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.