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LH: I want to go back because you mentioned that right before the war broke out you were actually ready for graduation from the College of the Pacific. Did you actually get to graduate and receive your diploma from Pacific?

GU: No, one of the requirements was to play a piano concerto and I was at the stage where I had the first movement all memorized, and then you have to practice with a college orchestra and perform in a recital at the college conservatory auditorium. I did not meet that particular requirement, but I also was a student who had made the honorary musical sorority, so they figured that I had met everything else. So I received my degree in absentia and that was another heartbreaking incident, because for me, I really wanted to have my parents see me receive that diploma and it was mailed to me.

LH: And you mentioned that you were the oldest daughter. Were you the first one to actually go to college in your family, or...

GU: Well no there are, my brother was also going, but I guess my mother was an unusual Japanese mother, because many of my Nisei friends, as we talk about growing up and about our education, there are some women friends who actually have a residue of anger left in them because of the whole Japanese culture of focusing on the male. And I guess because my mother wanted to become an opera singer herself, and came from the upper class of the Japanese family where women just married properly and that sort of thing, she steered all of her children as much as possible into music. And I guess again that was unusual, because at that particular time in most Japanese families, only males went to college, okay? [Laughs]

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.