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SN: Well, anyway, we had that... but, okay, so I went to school, started college again, University of Utah. I went to the University of Utah. There were a strong group of students who were, who didn't want to see us get registered at school, and they wrote editorials, editorials and letters into the Utah paper, Utah college paper. And I wrote a strong letter saying that, you know, my side of the story, that we are Americans by birthright especially, and educated here and so on. But there was quite a bit of prejudice. But I got along very well as far as that goes. Jobs were very hard to get. Nobody hired Japanese people, businesses especially. One business person says, "If I hired you, they'll throw a brick through my window so I'm not going to hire you." But I got a job, I got a job mowing nineteen greens every morning, seven days a week, at the country club. A country club where they won't allow any Japanese or blacks to be members, of course. I don't think they would allow Jewish people in there either. So that's what I did right on through two summers, it was two summers. And then in school, I graded econ. papers for the blue books and the term papers. I brought home big stacks of them. I did two classes for a professor, did all the grading at seventy-five cents an hour. [Laughs]

So those, that's the way I... then I went to... oh, and people would ask why I wasn't in the army. I went to, I was drafted and my eyes at that time was much worse than what they are now. They gave me a ranking of 4-F, so I didn't go in the army, but my brother did. My brother was, brother went to the army. So the army... but a little later on, I did go in the army. But before then, I went to Columbia University and got a master's in business administration and economics. And there... tuition was much higher, so I had to work. So I had several different jobs. I worked in a post office, worked in a post office at night, midnight, the graveyard shift. And then another interesting job I had was I was assistant to the window dressers at Borden Taylor department store. And so I've been very fortunate all my life, having lot of experiences. Also, I assisted the professor on grading, grading some lower term class papers, grading their tests and did that kind of work. I had some other odd jobs I was able to get, but regular steady job was post office and working for... and that was right in the middle of the night where you change the windows.

JC: It seems like your experience as a youngster was more American than Japanese as I'm hearing this, and yet it feels like that very experience worked well for you later on.

SN: Oh yes, right. It is true. When I went to Columbia, Columbia University, only Asians were Chinese, Chinese from China, and they were the ones that Chiang Kai-shek sent over for education, and they were brilliant students, and they were being trained for government work and so on. And this is called the Chinese CIA. Chinese CIA person went there also to watch over these students. Chiang Kai-shek wanted to make sure they didn't... let's say decide they wanted to stay in, stay in there and become anti-Chiang Kai-shek. [Laughs] Really, there were two of them. They didn't go to school. They just lived there, checked on the students, see what they're doing, and they got kind of suspicious when they were, Asians do talk to other Asians, and I talked to them and was fairly friendly to them. I made good friends with two or three of them. The CIA men would want to know what was going on. [Laughs] Very amusing.

But I stayed at International House there which is a very nice facility which had all foreign students, lots from South America. South Americans were there, and students that were going to, part of them were, Julliard was right across the street. So there were a lot of American students, and that's where I met my good friend, Frank Kelly, who is still a friend of mine that lives in North Carolina. He and I became very good friends there. And he calls me up once a week or so. Now I have all these long contacts with different people. But he was very, very supportive of me and we did a lot of things together. But the students were, all the students at Columbia, I felt no prejudice of any kind.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.