<Begin Segment 23>

MM: When you went back to UH after the service, you wanted to be a lawyer?

RK: Yes.

MM: But then something happened at UH that changed your mind?

RK: Yeah.

MM: And I think it has to do with Alan Saunders's class?

RK: Yeah.

MM: Tell us that story.

RK: We had, well, the interesting this is, my wife, at that time Mildred was my girlfriend, and so I used to correspond with her regularly when I was in the army. And she said to me -- she's a, she was an education major, but she likes the liberal arts. She has a lot of courses in that, and she took this political science course from this newly arrived professor, Allan Saunders, and she said it was the most stimulating course, one of the most stimulating courses she had. So she said, "When you go back and you're in political science, take his course." So when I got back to college, I stood in line, the old-fashioned way of registering us, and in those days it was the professors themselves who enrolled the people, the students in classes. And here I am standing in line to register for my class in political science and I remember this girl standing next to me. I didn't know her, but she says, "Don't take this guy Saunders." I said, "Why?" "Oh, he's going to flunk you." [Laughs] "He's tough." So I thought, oh, well. At any rate, I took Allan Saunders' course and he's very provocative and I got sucked in. One of the courses, he said something and I kind of, gave a response, and he said, "Oh, well," then he challenged me and so since then we've become good friends. He was one of these very dedicated professors. His office was always open. He was always on campus, very friendly to the students, although many students couldn't stand him because he was so demanding, in a nice way, but... at any rate, Allan eventually -- I was a political science major, hoping to become a lawyer -- eventually said, "Why don't you go into teaching?" So in a way I said, "Oh, well maybe." And that's what I... so eventually I said, well, I was really interested in state and local government. He said, well they're... best, the expert nationally is this William Anderson, and he's at the University of Minnesota. And Allan had taught at Minnesota for a while, I guess, too. So he said, "It's a nice department. Why don't you go there?" I really wanted to go east, but anyway, I said okay, I'll get my master's there and then I'll go east.

But when I got to Minnesota, lo and behold, again, I met another professor. William Anderson was a good professor, but I met another professor who was in political philosophy, Mulford Sibley. He's a legendary figure in Minnesota. Mulford was a pacifist and a socialist and he made it very clear, but he was the fairest professor I've known. He stated clearly what his, what he thought his biases were, but when he talked about Edmund Burke or Karl Marx, he was very fair. At any rate, he was a great teacher, very shy man personally, but when in the classroom he was dynamic. He was, he is very provocative, and he won many awards for teaching (...), but also he had many community members against him, calling him a Socialist, a Communist, and so on. You know the pattern. But anyway, I was very stimulated by Mulford Sibley. And so I changed to political philosophy. And I thought I'd do my -- and I decided well, it's stimulating here, I'll just stay here in Minnesota. They were very nice to me. They gave me a teaching assistantship. My wife, Mildred, got, got a job in the college education and we enjoyed our friends there, despite the severe winters. So we decided to stay at Minnesota and finish out.

And we had some very interesting experiences in Minnesota. While we were there, a bunch of students from Japan came in. Oh, maybe there were about a half-a-dozen of them, and interesting enough, they were on U.S. army scholarships. And I remember this one delightful character. His name was Yo Nagai. He's since passed on. But he looked like a typical Japanese, horn-rimmed glasses, prominent teeth and everything, but in spirit he was really American, I thought. But here's Yo, I took Anderson's course in state and local government, and it was a large class of about maybe hundred and twenty or so. So he, they give this -- if I may say so -- rather stupid exams of true/false and short answers. And they post the grades after the mid-term exams. And lo and behold, here I am ninety-nine or whatever, way up front. So when I'm looking at this, this gentleman from Japan comes over and he says, "You Kosaki-san?" And I said, "Yes." He bows, says, "Congratulations, Japanese did very well." [Laughs] Anyway, so we got to know Yo. And he was a delightful person. I can tell you so many stories about him. Like in the dorm, he stayed at Pioneer Hall, the men's dorm. And one day one of the students of the dorm told me this story. He says, you know last night we showed a film, a John Wayne film of Battle of Iwo Jima, or whatever, and the film showed how cruel the Japanese soldiers were. And he said, "Poor Yo, after the film got through, he stood up, tears streaming down his (face) and said, 'Don't believe that. I was in the Japanese army and we didn't do such things.'" [Laughs] But he was a delightful person. And another thing he says to me later, he says, "You on GI Bill?" I said, "Yes." He said, "How much money do you get a month?" I said, "I think I get about a hundred twenty dollars a month." He said, "Oh." He said, "I'm on U.S. army scholarship. I get two hundred forty dollars a month." [Laughs] You see the generosity of our government?

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 2004 Japanese American National Museum. All Rights Reserved.