<Begin Segment 32>

CN: And it was interesting to meet other Niseis, except that one of the first things that we would ask each other when we would meet a Nisei is, "Where were you in camp?" And so if the word was Tule Lake, with all the, the horrible things that we had gone through -- and people had associated that with us -- that surely we must have been one of the "no-no" people. So we were...

AI: And so you received a negative reaction?

CN: Yes, of course. And not only by the returning veterans who really couldn't stand us, but by most of the women students, too, except two of them who said to me, "I don't care where you were in camp. I like you and I'd like to be your friend." And I will always be thankful to her, but so... you're going to ask me, "Well, then what did you do?" Well, what I did was what anyone would do, you just go and join other groups, and that's what I did. So I enjoyed... I look upon my college years as really the best years of my life. It was lots of fun, I learned a lot, made lots of friends, and it was wonderful.

AI: So really when you first started in school, you found quite a difficult time in that you were actually rejected by most of the Nisei on campus because they assumed that since you were in Tule Lake, they assumed that you were some kind of disloyal or they made all kinds of incorrect assumptions. And then at the same time, even though it was so soon after the end of the war, it sounds like a number of mainstream Caucasian students were welcoming of you.

CN: Yeah, they were. And I met my husband my first day at, on the campus. And we didn't start dating right away or anything, but he and I became good friends. And, but I made a lot of other good friends, too. And I'm sounding like Pollyanna here, but it's really true. And it was a disappointment to be rejected by so many of the Niseis.

AI: And you must have been one of the very few going to the UW who had grown up in the Bellevue eastside area. Is that right?

CN: Uh-huh, yes. It was because not many of them had made the decision to go to college.

AI: Right. So in that sense, you didn't have any of your old friends or peers from the old community either.

CN: I had one good friend, but she had made the decision to become a nurse. So she was on lower campus and I was on upper campus, so we didn't have the opportunity to get together as often as we would have liked. And also she was working as a domestic taking care of four children, and cleaning house, and studying, and I would go and visit with her every once in a while. So it was my father and my sister helped me through. So I have a lot of things that I, I owe them because it was, they made it easier for me.

<End Segment 32> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.