<Begin Segment 17>

RP: What would you do during the wintertime?

TM: The first winter I enrolled at the college in midwinter in January so I went out to college and my sister Kate, she also went to College of Idaho too. And so we stayed in the dorm.

RP: Where was the College of Idaho?

TM: In Caldwell. And see, there was this other reverend that helped us so there was a group of us that went to College of Idaho and I don't know how we ever got there.

AF: You know, it's amazing when we think back all during this time, there was three of us that went to college during the war and to this day I can't imagine how they could have... our parents afforded it, my sister went all the way back to Minnesota and Taka went to... she graduated from Pacific University and I started Oregon State during the war. Right after the war, the war ended in August of '45 and I started in September of '45 from camp.

RP: Were there any scholarships or any type of financial aid involved?

TM: No.

AF: No, but it's amazing how we were able to go and I never questioned where the money came from but we were expected to go on to school.

RP: And did you at that particular time in your life have any specific career goals or aspirations of what you wanted to do with your life?

TM: I majored in sociology but because I thought well, I used to belong to the YWCA camps and so that was probably why I majored in that.

AF: I went on to a school of home economics and Oregon State at that time was one of the top home economics school and I became a food nutrition person worked in Portland here.

RP: So what was it like going to college?

TM: Well, you know, on that campus they had the ROTC and so there was just, it was very active college at that time in that way with the military. But there were quite a few Japanese that went there too. I wasn't a very good student but I....

RP: How did it feel or what was it like to be leaving your family and getting over there heading to college?

TM: Another adventure that... yes, it was, but part of growing up.

AF: Of course it was much more cheaper then but then it was big money for the parents you know, yes. I worked when I went to school in the kitchen doing dishes and things like that.

TM: Gosh I remember it was like sixty-nine dollars a semester for credit or something like that I think.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.