<Begin Segment 14>
KL: I want to keep my promise of letting you go in twenty minutes, so if you would just tell us about your education from that point forward, kind of the highlights of your education.
UN: Okay. I went to Park College as a pre-ministerial student. In my family we had nothing but ministers, and so my dad says, "Son, you're going to be a minister from our branch of the family." So I went to Park saying, "Yes, sir," but I always liked science. So I took a pre-ministerial course, and then added chemistry and physics and math to my curriculum, so I had like twenty-one hours. And I just about sank that first semester. But the chemistry prof. was watching what I was doing, and he came over to me and said he was, "We've been watching you, and how about being an assistant in a chem. lab? And you know, when you're seventeen -- well, I was eighteen -- eighteen, and when the professor comes and invites you, boy, it went right to my head. And immediately I became a scientist rather than the pre-ministerial. I wrote to Dad, my mother and father, and said that I got an offer to be an assistant in the chem. lab.
KL: Was he still in Milwaukee?
UN: Yes. And he said, "Son, I want you to come home right away." So I said, "Everything's paid 'til Christmas, I'll be home for Christmas." And then my dad, when I went home for Christmas, he says, "I sent you to school to become a minister." And then told him that I'm bound and determined to become a chemist, and I still, everything's paid up 'til end of the semester, I'm going back. And he could tell that I was resolved. And so he takes me to Gimble's and buys me a watch with a second hand, buys me a suit, and said, "You're gonna need a good watch." And he let me go back and finish up as a chemist. But my theology, the head of the theology department must have been watching me. And after I got my degree in chemistry, he calls me in, Dr. Teener. And Dr. Teener says, "Niwa," he says, "we're in the new world, and I don't want ministers that don't know science." He put it right to me. Says, "I have a church in Sedalia, that I want you to go there. I've written to McCormick Theological in Chicago, and you could go there for your ministerial degree." Wow, you know, I says, "Dr. Teener, let me think about this." [Laughs]
KL: Yeah, McCormick would be hard to say no to.
UN: Yeah, well... but I knew right away that I wanted to continue on, chemistry. And then my math teacher calls me in, Dr. Robbins wanted me to go to University of Missouri to continue my math. And he said that I always make mistakes on the easy one, but I had, I solved the real tough ones, and he liked that. So he was going to help me get into University of Missouri, he already talked to the chairman of the department. So seems like all my life, somebody's always trying to help me. And they weren't Japanese, you know. I come back to Los Angeles, and I needed a job because I was going to SC grad school. And I started knocking on doors, and I happened to knock on the door of a secretary of the American Chemical Society, and he started talking to me, and he said, "I kind of like you, son." And he said, "I'm going to get you a job." And he gets on the phone, calls up Union Oil company, and the vice president of Union Oil, and he says he said a big lie. He said, "I have a young man right here that I really like. I want you to give him a job." And so they said, "Send him over." So I go to Union Oil refinery in Wilmington, and sure enough, I get a job. But not only that, because this guy was a secretary of American Chemical Society, they started testing me right away, see how much I knew about chemistry. And then they said, "Well, son, report to the research department." So I report to the research department and I started working in research.
And then the semester came when I'm supposed to go back to graduate school, and I started thinking, if I quit this job and go back and get my degree at USC, the best I could hope for is to get a research, and I'm already there. So I said, "I'm going night school." Well, you can't get a degree going nigh school, you know, I found that out. I went for years and years. In the meantime, I became expert in metal separations and inorganic chemistry. Then I noticed that we didn't have certain tests in organic chemistry, then I took a course in electrical chemistry at USC, and I realized that I could use my coulometric method for, as a technique to anodize sulfur down to a tenth of a part per million. And so I made a machine using my coulometric method, and we were able to anodize sulfur down to a tenth of a part per million in oil. And also I made another machine to analyze down to a tenth of a part per million in nitrogen, and it turned out that I was the only one, our company was the only one that was able to do that. And so before I knew it, I was senior chemist. [Laughs] And then so on. And at one time they called me in saying, "You realize that to become research associate at Union Science and Technology, that you would have to have a doctorate? That we don't have any doctorate, research associate without a doctorate." I said, "Okay." But before I knew it, I became a research associate.
Then I represented Union to ASDM D-32 on [inaudible] and represented the company. And then, before long, I became senior research associate. If I wanted to, like, there was a new chemistry on clathration, and there was a professor at Arizona State that was an expert on clathration. I tell my boss, "I want go to University of Arizona State to learn about clathration." He says, "Go ahead." So I go to learn about clathration, they pay for my way, and I come back and I set up experiments in clathration. Then they said, "Oh, there's a conference on particle size distribution and particle barring in San Francisco, so why don't you go there?" So I, you know, I go there with my wife. And then I come back and I set up a laboratory, particle size distribution laboratory for our company, and they really liked it. [Laughs]
KL: I know you said it was a great company to work for.
UN: But my bosses were, they were so wonderful. You know, they never treated me like... and then I got called in by personnel, and they said, "You know, we knew you were going to be a good chemist, but you seem to have a lot of golfing buddies, bowling buddies," says, "we like that." Says, "We're gonna hire more Asians because you guys could get along." So they started hiring Asians in research in the whole company. He was vice present of personnel for the whole company. But Union Oil just was... you know, you're in this camp, and you look beyond the barbed wire, and you see this beautiful Manzanar mountain, and you see the sunrise on it. And so, you know, it's so inspiring, you can't help but grow with that. In the same way, personal relationship, you know. You go outside and you meet these people, and as you do the work, they help you, and help you achieve, introduce you to different areas. And it was just a wonderful career.
KL: What was the rest of your parents' lives, what were the rest of your parents' lives like? Where did they go and what did they do?
UN: Well, Mom ended up in a nursing home, Keiro. So I went to my mom and said, "Mom, you worked all these years here, you lived here in America. Did you like living here? Wouldn't you like to be a citizen before you die?" And Mom says, "Yes." So I took out the citizenship, you know, forms, I filled it out, I filled it out, I sent it in, and like overnight, they approved it. And so I take Mom to the immigration office, and the whole staff comes to greet my mom. And the top man in the immigration office in L.A. comes out, shakes my mom's hand, and says, "Mrs. Niwa, what took you so long?" And I found out why, because I went to FBI files in Washington, D.C., and there were letters from Mrs. Deal, letters from the mayor of Milwaukee, all commendating on her good work. And the government, you know, surely the immigration saw all this. And so she became an American citizen, and she died shortly after that.
KL: We're down to one minute. You want to give us thirty seconds on your family that your family that you have with Grace?
UN: Pardon?
KL: You want to give us thirty seconds on your family that you have with Grace? Or we could change the tape and we can do a fuller answer if you want to.
UN: [Laughs] Well, like I tell my wife all the time, this is the nicest thing that ever happened to me, that she should marry me. I love my wife. We've had a wonderful life together. And our daughter is married to a Caucasian boy, I've seen him since she was in, just starting high school. And she went to college, graduate school, and he was there all the time, and now their life together, he has a company of his own. The boy was tested to be precocious. The boy's only six years old, and he balances equations, he does fractions, you know, at six. [Laughs]
KL: I couldn't do that when I graduated high school very well.
<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.