<Begin Segment 9>

MN: And then to move you back a bit, I want to move you back to 1940. And first of all, I'll have you graduate from high school. And after you graduated, what were your plans? You graduated in '40?

KM: My family was one of the few families that started going to the university. My brother would have gone to university 1930, I think it was. Because he was exposed, I don't know if I mentioned earlier, but he was exposed to the mainland when he won the territorial glider contest. So he wanted to go away from Hawaii, and so he went to the University of Utah right after high school. And then Fumiye, before she could go to the University of Hawaii, she had to work one year. Because my brother, the expenses were kind of what you call, I'm pretty sure that was the reason why. But Fumiye, Katsuso, Katsuaki, and myself, we all worked one year after high school, to get a nest egg for our basic expenses, starting at the university. Before that, we had to find places to stay. Fumiye was sort of like a schoolgirl in one of the homes in Manoa. And Katsuaki -- Paul, I don't know what he did, but all of us had to do some part-time work to go to school.

MN: And you know, you were saying that your family was one of those where the kids went to university.

KM: Automatically. There was no, hardly any question... as to what we were going to thereafter, we had very little discussion, but going, continuing on after high school was a given fact. Wasn't much discussion as to whether we would or we wouldn't.

MN: And to what extent did the experiences of your older siblings, like Katsuro and Fumiye and Katsuaki and Paul have on you?

KM: So there was no other expectation but that after one year of working at the Maui Pineapple as a maintenance man, that I would continue going on to the university.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.