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BN: And before we get to college, and then I'll see if Issay has any questions, but before college, were you influenced at all -- I mean, you're growing up in the '60s, the Civil Rights Movement is going on, the Kennedy assassination, all the stuff that's happening in Vietnam. Are you cognizant of that, or is there any influence, any kind of political consciousness coming before college?

KM: Before college, okay. So I graduate high school in '66. So I kind of was aware of the Watts uprising, but we're a little far away from it, right? So I do hear about it, but it's not touching me much. I think I was more influenced by Immaculate Heart, by two things. One is that because the nuns were more progressive, they're the one that left or were kicked out by the cardinal when they wanted to be independent. So I was more influenced by them. They would bring in people like Father Daniel Barrigan of the Jesuits, and he would talk, I don't know what he talked about, but we would just be fascinated by whatever he was talking about. And then some of the women from the college, Immaculate Heart College, had gone to the South either as part of voter registration, I'm not sure which. But I remember hearing them and they were speaking to a large crowd of us, and I just remember thinking, wow, this is amazing, what they were talking about. It was all new to me, '65 probably. But I would just put it away in my head, and just remember that. I don't remember thinking about too much else. I was more involved probably with going to the first Beatles concert, the first Rolling Stones concert at the Shrine Hollywood Bowl for the Beatles.

BN: You saw the Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl?

KM: Uh-huh.

BN: Wow.

KM: I saw them, I didn't hear them, because everybody was screaming.

BN: Yes, yes.

KM: Yeah. So I had a friend that wanted to do all that stuff, and said, "Okay, we'll go." Then Rolling Stones at the Shrine, I think that was their first concert there, too. And then we followed them around, doing stuff like that, going to a few dances, the social thing. Yeah.

BN: At that time, was the Japanese American dance band scene...

KM: You mean like Roger (Young Auditorium) and all that?

BN: Yeah.

KM: Yeah, yeah. That was, but I was not into, as I said, I think, having gone to Maryknoll sort of really turned me off to the Japanese community. And I don't think we even spent much time in Little Tokyo. I mean, I went to Maryknoll, I think, for church, but I probably spent more time with high school things, because I was kind of involved with high school stuff at Immaculate Heart. I did go to a few dances, I never felt comfortable there. So I did not look back on it fondly like a lot of people do. Said, "Oh, they were so much fun." No, they were not fun.

BN: You don't go to the, not reenactments, but Sansei dances like now that...

KM: No, I don't enjoy them.

BN: ...that some folks do. Karen goes to some of those.

KM: No. They bring back really kind of like bad memories, frankly. I almost get a feeling like, the way people were, the way you had to be, and feeling like, "I can't relate to this." Maybe it was my bad attitude, I don't know. Maybe I just, I had something stuck in my head and I didn't let it go. I picked up a friend who was Chinese, and she had to tell her mother that my name was Kathy Chan because they hated the Japanese. But she and I went to the dance together. I could count the number of times I went. I would say, "I went," to be honest. My sister and I were just not quite... if she had a good number of Japanese American friends, but she was very un-Japanese. And even though I was probably more Japanese, I was not that kind of Japanese. It was painful, to be honest.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.