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MM: Then, as you mentioned, you, you got married with Mildred and you went off to Minnesota where you engaged in political philosophy as a master's student, and you were there for a couple years in the master's program. What happened then in terms of going on for a PhD program?

RK: Well, yeah, when I got into graduate school after I got a taste of it I decided, well, I will go for a PhD. And as I said, Minnesota was very friendly and very nice to me. I got readily admitted to the program. I got to be a teaching assistant, etcetera. But when I completed my coursework and passed my prelims, I decided, partly it's economics, but I'd go back to Hawaii because I was offered a job as a researcher, junior researcher, and an instructor, actually it was two jobs. One in the legislative reference bureau, where I had worked, by the way, as a senior, and to be an instructor in the department of, they called it then government, political science. So, since I got this offer, went back and I said to myself, well, in my spare time I'll write my dissertation. You know the story, it's two years pass and I had hardly made a dent.

MM: Right.

RK: And I was gonna do this classic thing about natural law. I was fascinated by that whole concept. So anyway, Mildred and I finally decided I'll never get this done unless I take time off. And so I went back to Minnesota. And luckily she got a full-time job teaching in educational philosophy, intercultural education. And I still had enough in the GI Bill left for monthly payments. So I spent a year trying to complete my degree. And she'll tell you the story of... two or three months into it, my daily going to the library and everything else. She comes home one day and I said to her, "You know, I think I better change my thesis topic." She said, "What?" I said, "Yeah, I think this natural law thing, I think everything's been written about it. I don't think I can do anything more." She said, "What are you gonna do?" I said, "I'm more fascinated by contemporary issues. So you know what, I think I'm gonna change and do something about majority rule." It's always been in the back of my mind. Some people equate democracy with majority rule. And you can readily see the contradictions. So I said, "I think I'm gonna try to explore this relationship." So that's what I did. Of course, she was sort of dismayed thinking, oh my God, there's all these years and two or three months here, and oh, can he finish it in, in whatever it was, four months, five months that we had left? But lo and behold, with her encouragement, and her typing my thesis, and the typing of the thesis was difficult because you didn't have a computer. They insisted on certain margins, they insisted the footnote be on the page in which the footnote was referenced. Anyway, so I told her, I said, well, when I, after my final oral exams, which I passed, I said to her, "The only thing they commended me for was the thesis, the typing of the thesis." [Laughs] But anyway, I completed it. Although that question is still, I still wrestle with it, whether it's, you can't really equate majority rule with democracy. But it's a phase of it, it's applicable to some things, but I guess my conclusion was basically you have to have people who are interested. You have to have knowledge of the issue. You have to have valid discussion in order to come up with a, to have majority rule work, and you still think, are there certain things that the majority cannot rule out, like freedom of speech? But to what extent? It's still a very tricky problem that I really haven't solved.

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 2004 Japanese American National Museum. All Rights Reserved.