<Begin Segment 16>

BN: Now you also spent a year in Japan, so how did that come about?

KM: It came about because, again, it's kind of like this whole, for many of us Sansei, I think, that whole search for identity, never feeling quite comfortable. So never feeling comfortable at Maryknoll, never feeling comfortable at Immaculate Heart, going to Berkeley thinking this is the world, I'm going to find my place, and then feeling like I'm observing these JAs that are hanging out on the third floor of the library, and people that are in the sororities, and I'm thinking, "Who are these people?" and almost feeling a dislike. Fair or unfair, I just said, "I'm not like them, and I don't want to be like them. I don't need to be grouping together, what's wrong with them?" That was all my thinking. And that I'm not like these sorority types that are fitting in with the white, preppy and all that. And I'm not going to try to be any of this stuff, but where do I fit in? But I had my friends that were Chinese, white, African American, JA, but you're older than me. And one of them had gone to Germany, a year abroad. And then we lived in a house together, JA and a couple of white roommates, and that felt very comfortable with my friends. And that was the year that Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated. And my friend's boyfriend was very involved with the Kennedy campaign, I remember he was really crushed. He was Chinese, he was pre-med. And it was a kind of a somber year, and my really good friend was in Germany, but she was going to come back the next year, I thought, oh, year abroad, should think about that. And there was a group of guys that lived upstairs, and one of them was JA, and I really liked him. Issay wants to know. I really liked him, but nothing was really clicking in terms of relationships, things like that, or just friends were good, that was all good. This is funny, because someone set me up with this JA guy, and this other person's boyfriend was a PhD in physics. And so this guy was a PhD in physics, and it turns out to be, maybe I won't say his name, because it's so embarrassing. Anyway, he turns out to be this pretty well-known guy now, physics guy. But at the time, I thought I was too, anyway... So nothing was clicking relationship-wise, and I didn't really, I said, "Where do I belong, where do I fit in?" And I think, I remember my friends saying, "Well, we thought you were from Japan." And I always felt more like my father anyway, so I said, "You know, maybe Japan is it." I will apply for the year abroad to go to Japan or France, because France had a lot of appeal, too.

So I don't think I got in right away, but then I waited and then I got into the Japan year abroad program. So there were about thirty of us from the different UC campuses, and we all had only once choice, and that school was ICU, International Christian University, Kokusai Kirisutokyo Daigaku, in Tokyo. And the really wonderful thing about this program was that it took all of us on a three-week orientation program, I don't know if they do that now. So we traveled around Japan to all these different places, and just learned about different things. Went to Koyasan, Kyoto, I can't even remember, so many different things that got us settled into Japan, and it was autumn that we arrived, August or September, and that was just a great time to arrive in Japan. I think nashi were in season. Anyway, I just remember thinking, whoa, this is a whole different feel and smell. Everything was so small. But I just felt really happy to be there, and I lived in the dorm on the campus, most of us did. But then I learned right away that I was not Japanese again. Well, I was told by the Japanese there, they called all of... me and everybody that came there were "non-Japa." And I said, "Oh, wait a minute. Maybe the white people are "non-Japa," but I am, too. So they considered us all "non-Japa," "non-Japa." And then I don't know if you want me to talk about that year?

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.