<Begin Segment 22>

TI: Okay. So I'm going to now move on. So from Gila River, how did your family leave Gila River? Under what circumstances?

SK: They never left. They never left camp. I did, but they stayed 'til the very...

JS: It was closed?

SK: Yeah.

TI: So you left earlier, so where did you go?

SK: I went to a school in Missouri.

TI: And so how did that come about? How did you choose Missouri?

SK: Why? I don't know why. But after a few years of just staying over there, really nothing to do, and a lot of people were leaving, leaving the center go to east someplace. And, well, two years of doing nothing, why, I decided I'd better maybe go to school. So I was able to leave Gila River to go to school, go to college.

TI: And which college was this?

SK: Missouri School of Mines. The only, it was the only engineering school in the Midwest. I mean, a lot of colleges would have all those, whatever you study for, I mean, whether it's engineering or whatever was into college themselves. But in Missouri, The School of Mines was all engineers. If you wanted to be part of the University of Missouri, that was, if you wanted to be a chemical engineer or mechanical or whatever you want to be, that's where you went.

TI: And what kind of engineer did you want to be?

SK: Well, I thought maybe, I thought this was easy engineering, so I went in for geological engineering. At that time, if I went another year, I could be any, any kind of engineer. 'Cause basically, when you start, everything is the same. For about two and a half years, you take the same, same course. And one of the, one of the courses as I remember, I mean, you either got an A or an F. And I don't... I'm sure I got an F the very first time I tried it. They'll give you the map of the United States, then you fill in the, where California would be or Washington, wherever. And it's awful hard. You think it's easy, but you try it some time. Well, if the kind of grade that you got was, either if you got 'em all right it's an A, and if you miss one, it's an F. And right now it might be a little too, little harder, 'cause there's two additional states now. You'd be surprised how many people don't know where Alaska is.

TI: That's good.

SK: Or Hawaii. [Laughs]

TI: So how long were you at the Missouri School of Mines?

SK: Oh, maybe two and a half years.

TI: And then, and then what happened after that?

SK: Well, I went for a job interview. It was the easiest school to... very easy compared to Fresno State at that time. But maybe I matured in about two years. But let's see now. Where were we now?

TI: So you said after two years at the Missouri School of Mines...

SK: Oh, well, to interview for a job after graduation, and the first job offer I got was to travel, a lot of traveling. It was for a hundred fifty dollars a month, and to travel from Texas to Alaska. And if I worked overtime, you might, I might have made two hundred dollars. Anyway, I decided that was enough for me. After all that work, I decided maybe I needed more, little more work. So I went to the University of Minnesota to get my master's degree. I don't know if I should put that down in there. I mean, anyway, I only... I went there right after graduation, and we went fishing up in the lakes up there. I don't know you need, needed a license to fish, but I didn't have one. But I fished up there and I couldn't get anything. But I made some friends up there, and later, he, the man came and visited me back home. And I have a picture of him, and I just can't recall his name anymore.

TI: And who was this man?

SK: But anyway, I know, I only know about the coaches. I mean, this, I remember the coach would be Bernie Beerman and one of the star was a freshman, incoming freshman name Leo Nomalini. I don't know if you've ever heard of him or not. But he was one of my, one of the stars there. Lot of my friends, they don't even know I was going to school anyway.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2010 Densho and Preserving California's Japantowns. All Rights Reserved.