<Begin Segment 11>

TI: Going back to your, sort of, path, so after a few months in Tanforan, you were able to go to Washington University. That's pretty fast. A lot of Niseis, it took a long time for them to get accepted to another college. And here after a few months... so you didn't have to go to Topaz, you went directly from Tanforan.

YM: That's right.

TI: What were some of the reasons why you think you were accepted so quickly?

YM: I have no idea except that Gary, in his book, says that there were quite a few students that were selected, I guess, because of their academic record or something. And when I got to Washington University, there were about thirty other Niseis there. And I think a number of them were accepted in East Coast universities.

TI: And going back to Washington University, you mentioned about thirty Niseis. Do you recall from what other colleges they were coming from? You came from Berkeley, were there other colleges that you could recall?

YM: You know, I didn't, I didn't socialize too much with all of the thirty, I just knew the ones who were at Cal. I would say maybe ten or so of those were Cal, I knew them at Cal. So the others, I didn't know anyhow.

TI: And in terms of payment, how was that handled? Because Berkeley is a public institution and Washington University, you'd be out of state. How would that...

YM: It's a private university, yeah. Well, I'm not certain. I remember my parents sent me some money. I had some money in my bank account, 'cause I used to work while I was in high school and my mother used to make me put all my money in the bank. So I had those funds, that was sent to me. I don't know how the others paid for their tuition and things. I believe the army provided us with transportation from camp to the colleges. But other than that, I don't remember exactly how the others were able to... well, tuition was not as expensive as it was today. I think it was like a hundred or two hundred dollars a semester or something like that.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright ©2009 Densho and the Twin Cities JACL. All Rights Reserved.