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BN: So we'll now move to Berkeley, you graduate and you're starting, I gather, in the fall of '66, and Judy is already, is there as well. As you're entering, do you have a sense of what you're going to major in? Do you have a sense of what you want to be when you grow up at that point?

KM: Well, my major was going to be math. And so, full of confidence, I enrolled in an honors math class, one of three women in the entire class. But I'm not so concerned about that as more of the, just being at Berkeley and living in the dorm at that time. Judy was living in the co-op across campus, north side, I was on the south side. And just wanted to get to know people, be in the place. It was like, to me, the world, Berkeley was the world. And so I have a roommate that's Japanese American, not a person who I expected to be a roommate with. She was a pharmacy major coming from Tracy, California, very orderly, organized, and disciplined. And I was not very organized and disciplined, I was there to enjoy myself. So on my floor, there was a room next to us, and they had some folks that were a year older than we were. And so I was just trying to check out and find people that I can relate to, really. So the math class turned out to be overwhelming. I learned very quickly that I was not the smartest person in the world, and that maybe honors math was over my head. And so the three women, three of us kind of grouped together to help each other. I think we almost all lived at the same dorm, actually. And our TA really helped us a lot, so that was rough. That was a rude awakening. I think I took some classes that I don't know why I took it. So honors math, and I think I took a class, it wasn't Hindi, Urdu, but it was something related to that, some esoteric thing, and some other class. So it was really rough that first quarter, and then I got to know my classmates or dorm mates next door and became friends with them. And so I was always relating to people that were a little older than me, not my same age, and they told me when they first saw me, they thought I was from Japan, which I found kind of interesting. Said, whoa, okay, because they were observing all the people, all the new kids. But anyway, so they told me that and that always stuck in my brain. But I hung out with them a lot and just sort of enjoyed myself the first quarter, but managed to pass.

BN: So did that change your trajectory in terms of major and so forth?

KM: It threw everything off. It was like, here I thought I had a path, and so then it was like, okay, I am just going to start taking classes I like, so I took comparative literature, French literature, took French, took Spanish, and my sister and I were in the same French class together. And then since she lived in the co-op, they had to work for everything. They had to clean their own dorms, cook their own food, central kitchen. So then at the dorm, we had these great lunches and everything in the cafeteria. So I grabbed two lunches, I think I grabbed two, maybe one, but it was enough for two. So then we sometimes, I shared my lunch with her. I always felt kind of bad for Judy because she, I don't think she felt bad for herself, but she was always working, and she felt she had to do that. And I hadn't worked at all, and I was living in a dorm, but my parents were paying for this. And so I think back, it's like I don't know why I didn't feel more responsible, but I didn't. So I continued to help her out, and I visited her at the co-op and we were close that way, and I was part of all her traumas, as Issay may want to know, her relationships became my relationships because she talked to me about it every day on the phone. So that was part of that. So I was just searching, I was searching for a different interest, which was probably a good thing because it opened up a lot of stuff for me, although at one point I said, "Wait a minute, I shouldn't just reject the sciences because of math." I remember my father saying, "You should become a nurse, a school nurse," because it's a good job. He never said, "Why don't you become a doctor?" So I never had that in my mind, but then I said, "I think I'm just as good as these guys here." I could take the math, physics class that these med students or pre-meds take, so I took it. And I got a B or whatever in it, but then I never went out beyond that. I just said I could do it, that's all. Then I got into psychology, and I said, okay, these are kind of interesting classes, I'll just take them for a while. And that's what I ended up with.

BN: Now, the co-op that Judy lived in, was it a school sponsored thing or is it a totally outside...

KM: No. Berkeley had dorms and they had co-ops.

BN: So it was a school sponsored or...

KM: Yeah, there were at least three or four co-ops. And if I recall, a lot of the Nisei lived in the co-ops when they went to Berkeley, and they remember some of these. They didn't have as many, so she lived at Stebbins, which was the women's co-op, there were women's and men's co-ops at that time. And then later on, they built Ridge House, and then she moved into that one, which was co-ed, and that's where she met her boyfriend.

BN: And then in choosing to live in a co-op, is there a, primarily ideological kind of motive or is there an economic motive?

KM: For her, I think it was economics. She was very aware of our family's financial situation, I guess I was less aware.

BN: So you explicitly chose not to live in the co-op.

KM: Well, I remember when we dropped her off at Stebbins, which was a really old building, and we moved her in, and then we were driving away and we could see her on the street waving goodbye to us. I remember my mother and myself and maybe my cousin, we were like, it was such a, kind of a sad, run-down place, and I thought, oh, this is terrible. So I think in my mind, I thought I was never gonna live there.

BN: Right. So her experiences almost discouraged you from going that route.

KM: I don't think I wanted to do all that stuff. You had to clean your buildings, you had to go to a central kitchen and cook, that didn't attract me, no, at that time. Maybe now I would, but not then.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.