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MN: You know, I know that some of you veterans got involved in student government on UH campus. What got you involved?

KM: Well, I don't know if I said so, but remember, Ms. Jones, my high school, she had always told the students that as a student, you can limit yourself only to the academic studies, or you can get involved in playing baseball for the high school or getting involved with stage plays, or get involved with other, we had some other clubs at the high school level. And she always told us that, "You cannot limit yourself only to academic, pure academics when you're going to school, because there are other factors besides just pure academics, like in life." She says, "When you get out of your school, when you're studying and learning, in going through the world, besides your work that you make a living on, there are other activities of life that involve you and your family. And you've got to expose yourself and get involved with community activities." This was her teaching from the time I was in high school. And so very early when we came back, one of the first things we did was to get involved with the board. Each class had a board of governors or whatever, representing the class. I think from the very beginning they were involved with these board activities, ended up being the president of the senior class at that time.

MN: And the UH government at that time, how involved were the veterans?

KM: Oh, the veterans were very much involved with the activities. Once we came in, I remember the first year there was very little. For second and third people it was with, they were ahead of us. The veterans were very much active. We had a big carnival, first or second year, the university carnival. The first carnival, about the only one that I remember the university putting it on. But we had a very big carnival which Wadsworth Yee was the general chairman of. This was strictly an outside affair, they were extracurricular activities of the student body.

MN: Even as you were a student at UH, your ties with the veterans were still very strong?

KM: Oh, yes. It was ongoing. In fact, the veterans activities dominated more than the school activities. Because, remember, veterans activities, we had softball. When the softball season was there, we had softball. When the bowling season started, we had bowling. And when basketball season came out, we had basketball. So it took up a lot of your time. In between that, we had picnics and gatherings among the veterans.

MN: And then so when you were at the UH and involved in all these activities, how did you manage to support yourself?

KM: I had two choices. We had the GI Bill of Rights, which paid sixty-five dollars a month if you took the benefits of the GI Bill. And I had the option of taking advanced ROTC. As a veteran, you automatically could get into advanced ROTC. Advanced ROTC, you got seventy-five dollars stipend a month. And so I figured I would take advanced ROTC and save my GI Bill for whatever I would do after University of Hawaii. And fortunately, I did that. I took my two years of advanced ROTC and then when I went to law school, I started to utilize my GI Bill.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.