Densho Digital Archive - Toru Sakahara - Kiyo Sakahara Interview I (denshovh-storu

<Begin Segment 24>

DG: Tell me about your work with the YWCA.

KS: Oh, the YWCA had a campus branch and they had an executive that promoted fireside chats and little get-togethers for women. She'd have tea and cake or coffee and would get together and we'd talk about whatever we want to. If she, there were...

DG: Were there other Japanese in...?

KS: A few, a few Japanese but mostly they were... some of them were girls that I knew in high school and took part in them... They didn't join sororities or something.

DG: Was this because there were no sororities?

KS: There were sororities.

DG: No, I mean for you.

KS: No, well I couldn't afford it anyway, but they had a policy for only pledging a rather small group. In fact, even in the whole community, if you didn't belong to the right groups, you couldn't get into a sorority either. It didn't matter whether you were white, black or oriental. The sororities were a very discriminatory bunch.

DG: Did you go to the YWCA because you had friends that went there also?

KS: Yes, and I joined the Fuyokai because that had been going on at the University for, oh, a good ten years before I went. I think it was organized either in 1927 or thereabouts. 1928, maybe, a group of six Japanese women students got together and formed a...

DG: Do you know who they were?

KS: I really didn't. I only knew Kikuye Masuda. She was in the original group that I think she said she was about...

DG: Is that Tom Masuda's wife?

KS: Yes. I didn't know the other women in that group...

TS: How about Yuki Fujii?

KS: She might have been, but maybe she joined after these women formed the group, 'cause I don't remember seeing her name in that organizing group. But the Fuyokai did a tremendous service in the sense that it gave a social life to all of the (Japanese) students. Because if you didn't belong to a sorority, the Y didn't have dances or mixers or that kind of thing. It was not co-ed.

DG: But you didn't think about going out with Caucasians?

KS: No, never did. Well, I knew some and they would ask me out, but I only had so few days to go out that I just limited them to the Japanese groups that I had...