<Begin Segment 4>

MU: And how about your schooling here in Denver, or, what was it -- Agate?

GK: At Agate. That was a small cowboy town. I started in from (an) orientation class, then went through grammar school for three years, and high school for three years, then went right on to Denver University for three years, and then (...) to law school for three years.

MU: Okay. Now, when you first came back from Japan, it must have been hard for you to pick up the English language.

GK: Yes. I only had smattering of English. I couldn't engage in any conversation (in) English, so I had to learn everything from the bottoms up.

MU: Now, when you went into law school, was there something that prompted you to go into law study?

GK: When I graduated from high school, I didn't know what to do. Then soon after I graduated from high school, I was notified that I had a four year scholarship to Denver U. So at that moment I decided to go through law school, which was about three undergraduate and three law school. But I thought if I could go to college for four years with a scholarship, I should be able to manage the remaining (two) years. So I decided to take up law.

MU: Was there anything else that prompted you to go into law, like your father's influence?

GK: For some reason I always wanted to become a lawyer. And I didn't have any chance to even activate that desire. But then the original influence might have been my father's avocation...

MU: Yeah, tell us about that.

GK: ...he spoke English quite well, for an Issei. So he was serving as a translator, interpreter for Issei in all the dealing with the... in the community. And whenever there was troubles, Japanese had to hire an attorney, and he was a go-between. And when there was legal cases, he went into court to interpret for the Japanese. So I used to hear about that, and then my father used to talk about lawyers, and I thought that lawyers were gods. Because everything had to be... dependent on lawyers. So unconsciously, I developed the, I guess, desire to go to law school if I could.

MU: Wonderful. Now I was curious about how you managed financially to go to law school. In those days it was very hard to get into law school in the first place and then to finance it was another problem. And so it was the scholarship that you --

GK: Scholarship paid the tuition and part of the other expenses.

MU: Okay, now where did you get the scholarship?

GK: Oh that was from (my high) school.

MU: From school?

GK: From, it was a merit scholarship. Just because I was in the top of the, top of the ten in the class. So I thought that was great, but there were only six in the class, graduating class. But I don't tell people about that. [Laughs]

MU: Now, were you about the only Nikkei attorney that...

GK: I was the only, we were the only Nikkei family in this area, place called Agate. So we were the only one, the only Japanese in grammar school and high school. And then, when I decided to go on to college and study law, I was the first one to study law. So there was a great expectation among the Japanese community for me to graduate. When I graduated in 1940, and got my license, I was the only one and the first Nikkei to become an attorney in the state of Colorado.

MU: First one, huh?

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.