<Begin Segment 15>

MA: So when did you get married?

AH: In 1962. It was, I graduated in nursing, June, and then I got married in August, a couple months later.

MA: So you attended the University of Utah, you said.

AH: Uh-huh.

MA: And when did you decide that you wanted to go into nursing? Was that something that you had known when you first applied to college, that you wanted to do?

AH: No, it's something I've already known. You know, in those times, there weren't that many options for women. Either was housewife, secretary, teachers, nurse, and even when I graduated, this is how unrealistic -- well, maybe it was realistic at that time. Even after I graduated and got married, I thought, "Okay, I'll just work as a nurse maybe for a few months, and then I'll have a baby and I'll be a housewife rest of my life and that's it. I won't go back to nursing at all." But of course, it didn't work out that way.

MA: When you were at University of Utah, were there many other Japanese American students there?

AH: Uh-huh, there was a few of us. And that's where we formed that, they call it Utorients, they called it Utes for University of Utah, and then Orient for Orients, and so it was called Utorients, and it was a pretty active organization.

MA: Was it just Japanese American or was it also other Asians?

AH: No, it was Japanese Americans.

MA: What types of things did you do?

AH: We had dances. Lot of it was social kinds of things. We, I think we did some fundraising. It was social things, dancing and picnics and things like that, and it was pretty active. And we used to have some... annually we'd have this invitational basketball tournament, and you're going to interview Ted Nagata and he'll know about that, too. Anyway, it was a real popular event, especially for the girls. And we would... anyway, we would invite teams from California, we used to have the San Francisco Saints come. Do they still exist? Do you know about them?

MA: I don't know, I'm not sure.

AH: They were really popular, the Chinese basketball team from San Francisco, and then we'd get teams from San Francisco in general, and Berkeley and Oakland, L.A., and then they would all come, and all of us girls, we would -- this is awful -- we would dump our boyfriends and we'd go out with the basketball players. [Laughs] Isn't that awful? I'll probably be the only one ever admitting that, that's going to be interviewed. But anyway... and some, some of those stuck because I know there's a few from Salt Lake that did meet these basketball players, and they're married, and happily married now. But, and then we'd have queen contests and things like that. And I ran and I never got it, but that's okay. [Laughs]

MA: Was this group pretty tied into the Japanese American community in Salt Lake City and Japantown?

AH: Oh, yeah.

MA: There was a strong relationship there?

AH: I'm sorry, the basketball tournament?

MA: Just your, your group in college, in general.

AH: Oh yeah, we were all, because, see, we were still close together. There's a comfort zone because there's still... I wouldn't say an outward discrimination, but we just felt more comfort being together, and we didn't do a lot of things outside of the Japanese community. Even though we were okay, the others accepted us okay. Except there was one experience that... there was Martha Miyagishima and Grace Endo and I, we were student nurses at the same time. Our freshman year, you know how the colleges would have freshman orientation, and they'd have a social, and one of being a dance and all that. So all three of us went, and then the hostess was a sorority chapter. And this one sorority member was escorting three boys to come toward us to dance with us, and when she saw that we were Asians, she goes, "Oh, well, let's, I'll find you some other girls," and turned around and walked away. Because, I'm sure it's because she didn't realize we were Asians, that she didn't want to introduce the boys to us. And so we looked at each other and thought, "Well," so discrimination.

MA: What about in class? Did you, were most of your teachers men or women? How did you feel being a Japanese American woman in your classes in college?

AH: You know, I didn't, I don't ever remember negative feelings about it. And then, you know, nursing, lot of nursing professors were women, and I didn't feel any discrimination. The general classes were also male professors, but I don't remember any discrimination that way.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Topaz Museum. All Rights Reserved.