Densho Digital Archive - Michiko Kornhauser Interview (denshovh-kmichiko

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MK: And when I get to New Orleans, East-West Center had already arranged it at the Rockefeller Hotel to stay. And then, but the moment I walked into the lobby, the counter, the man looked at me and then said that well, price will be such and such, but I said, "Well, the East-West, University of Hawaii already arranged it to pay you," and he said, he just very coldly said that no. It was just impossible to stay there, and I got practically thrown out of the hotel, so I went to the YWCA. Then I learned about prejudice, you know. I was not white. And then I went to Atlanta, Georgia. And the reason why I was able to get the scholarship to Atlanta, Georgia, CDC, was because I didn't understand English. The prerequisite was PhD or MD. I didn't have either one. But since I didn't read the fine prints, they took it for granted that I had that, and then they said, "It was excellent to have a Japanese, physician or a Japanese person in this international community." That's why I got accepted. And I got there and, Okayama where I lived was famous for encephalitis B and encephalitis diseases, but then they didn't know the cure, so I was able to learn how to separate certain serum and so on at the, while I was at the Communicable Disease Center. And later on when I went back to Japan, I was able to teach some of the health technicians on how to do it in the American way, so I felt good about that.

Then I stayed there, but my friend went on to visit another brother in Charleston, South Carolina. And then later on, I used to take a bus during the weekend, and then I'll go to my friend's place. And one day, I got on the bus, and you know how 1963, everything was burning, all kind of uprising everywhere, and then I fell asleep. I am very good at falling asleep on the bus. And when I woke up, I saw nothing but black faces looking at me, and I felt comfortable in the back of this bus since I was sleeping there. And then nobody was sitting next to me, but they are all looking at me. And the two black children's faces looking at me, turning, they are sitting on the seat ahead of me then turn around and looked at me, and they said, "Where are you from?" I said, "Wow, your eyes are beautiful brown," and they giggled, and everybody giggled. And then it was open here, empty seat. "Now, why don't you sit here?" and then they're hesitant. Then one woman said, "Oh, why not?" She came and sat next to me, and we had a good time in talking to each other. And then I taught them how to sing Japanese songs, the children's songs. So by the time I got, the bus got to Charleston, South Carolina, whole busload of black people, we are all singing Japanese songs together. We're having a great time. But then I said goodbye to them because my friend was waiting outside. Then I got off the bus. The moment the passengers realized that I was meeting Caucasian people there, their faces became like stone. There is just no expression. I couldn't even say goodbye to them. Then the bus went off. In America, then I realized there are lot of problems.

And then after one semester at the Communicable Disease Center, then I went to Miami where another East-West Center grantee's parents lived, and they accepted me as a host family. And while I was living in Miami, and then I had to buy some clothes, and then I, the breakfast was, everything had to be kosher. I didn't know what that meant. And then later on, somebody taught me, other student who was traveling with me told me that, "Oh, these are Jewish people." Now all the stores this woman took me was Jewish stores, nothing else. Then my friend said that, "Oh, they stick together." Then I'm learning. I'm picking up about this country. And after that, then I took a bus all the way to New York. And when I got off in New York terminal, came out. When I came out, Cadillac stop right in front of me and a well-dressed man got out of the car and then flipped open his back of the car and said, "Welcome to New York. I'll take you for a ride. I'll show you this island, Manhattan Island. We'll drive together." I got so scared. I just said that this is, something is wrong. I was so scared. I pretended I didn't understand what he was saying. Then after a while, he apologized, then went away. And then I learned that later on in the newspaper that there is a kind of gang of people collecting Asians to sell as prostitutes, and I was very lucky. And then at one point... no, before that at Washington, D.C. when I visited Japanese embassy, and I asked a question, I always ask questions. I said, "Suppose I stay in this country, marry American, how do you feel?" And embassy people said, "We welcome that. One less person to worry about. Japan is suffering from population, the increase, too much, too many people. So if you want to stay, why don't you do it?" Then I thought, then because of that careless statement, I lost kind of loyalty to Japan or the feeling, whatever feeling I had. Well, if you think so, if the government feels like that, besides, my mother has been mistreated so badly by the government, and I had questions to begin with, and then that man's statement in Japanese Embassy made me really relieved. I became a free agent, spiritually. That's the way I felt.

And then before that and then when I was living in Charleston, South Carolina, for a few months, my friend's brother was working for the navy. He taught me how to fly a Cessna. And then that was one of the best experience I have ever had. And then I used to have hair very long all the way down to the floor, when I sat. And then he said, "Michiko, why don't you chop your hair off, because you'll feel better that way. You look much better with the short hair." So he took me to kind of a military, in a barber shop and had my hair cut. When that hair disappeared, I became very light, spiritually as well, and somehow I felt that the tie with my mother was cut. It's so strange, but that's the feeling. It's a freedom that I felt. Then I read somewhere, same way. If you cut the hair that you're cutting off the tradition, away from tradition. And then after New York, I visited and then took a bus and visited various friends. And then in mid New York, I had a friend with whom I studied in the CDC. And when I was there, the neighbors came, and they had a big party for me. And then they told me that how American Indians used to charge from between the valleys, into the valley, and then kill the white people and so on. They said those Indians are horrible. That's something I heard from these people, and oh, I see, so I learned about American Indians. Then I stayed at Professor Kennedy who used to give a talk at University of Hawaii that I got to know very well. I visited his family. But his daughter was suffering from multiple sclerosis. And then I learned how to feed the patients or how horrible the situation of that disease was at the time. Then I moved up into Boston where I had one of the professors from Okayama University Medical School working at Harvard Medical School. So for a while, I worked there and helped him out with languages as well as his laboratory experiments, and his wife didn't know any English. And then also that the ceiling had a big hole, but because they couldn't communicate that I think the landlord took advantage of Japanese visitors, so I had to be a bad woman and then go and talk to the landlord to fix the ceiling, and at the same time introduce this doctor's wife, professor's wife, to the common supermarket where she could shop for American food. Because up 'til then, she was buying nothing but Japanese looking things like canned foods and so on. She didn't know how to cook American food. You know, it was a nice experiment.

And after that, and then I went to Roseville Memorial Park Hospital, Roseville Memorial Park Hospital in Vancouver. It's a cancer institute, and there I helped another professor for a while. He was working on the cancer research, and I was able to do that. And then I visited Cincinnati, Ohio. I had another friend. And then there, the next day when I woke up, about twenty well-dressed Caucasians was standing in front of my door. I hadn't even washed my face, and they said, "Well, we belong to Ikebana International. We want to learn fresh idea about how to make a Japanese garden." I said, "Japanese garden? I don't have the slightest idea how to make a Japanese garden." But aren't you Japanese? I said, "Wow." Then I learned once you leave a country, you become the representative of that country. Then I said to myself, I have to study about my own country. And then after that, I went to Chicago where another professor was waiting for me. I was very lucky, one after another. Then there's another woman researcher whom I met at the Communicable Disease Center in Atlanta who asked me to come and visit her in Chicago, so I did. She was I think Chicago, I think public health institute, head of some division, and she invited me to her apartment, very nice, very luxurious apartment. She said, "You know, Michiko, I come back here every night, nobody is waiting for me. To me was very important to get PhD. But now, I'm this age, no one to share my life with. Now, I don't want you to do this. So if you have a chance, I want you to get married and have a family." That's what she told me. So I said, "Okay."

Then I flew to the University of Washington to Seattle, and I spent the summer there in 1963 and then took marine biology at the University of Washington. And then every once in a while, I think, we worked at the, what's the harbor that's the institute, the laboratory, the marine laboratory, we worked. And I had to use a little boat to go out into the lake-like ocean and collect samples from the ocean. It was so beautiful. I could see the bottom of the ocean. Then when I looked up, I saw the mountains in the distance with the snow on top. It was so dream like. I said to myself, this is my dream. I hope I can live here for the rest of my life, and that's the way I felt. So now living here, I feel that my dream came true because I'm very happy living in Oregon. Seattle is too big for me. The frantic traffic scares me. But I felt very good at the University of Washington. When I was staying at the girl's dormitory, the toilet, bathroom, the door, you can see the legs of a person when they are using the toilet, and one day, I was washing my face. I saw a little Vietnamese or a Chinese looking girl coming in, and then I happened to see her. Suddenly, her legs disappeared. Then I thought about the time when I first came to this country, you know. I didn't know how to use the toilet. That woman didn't know either, so she was on top of the toilet. [Laughs] Then when I was there, I got to know a Czechoslovakian refugee, and she and I became very good friends. You know, she's dead now, but then we used to do things together. And then she wanted to belong to some kind of organized, campus organization. But because she was a Jew, she was not accepted at any kind of house residence. And then I learned about segregation, not against blacks, not against just Japanese, but against Jews too. You can't tell the difference by looking at them, but that's something I learned. Then the night before I came back to Hawaii, I cried. I didn't want to come back to Hawaii, so hot and humid. I love Seattle, their life in Seattle. It was so beautiful. That's the study tour that the East-West Center gave us. And American students had a chance to go to Asia of their choice. We, Asian students, had a choice to come to the mainland of our choice. It was the best scholarship I've ever known, graduate scholarship I've ever known.

SG: How long did you travel for?

MK: So I left Hawaii in February and went back to Hawaii in August, end of August.

SG: Were you corresponding with your mom?

MK: Yes. I always wrote diary. And while I was at the East-West Center, every day I wrote a letter, I mean, that's at my diary and sent to my mother. And then after I came back married, East-West Center wanted to publish my diary, so I asked my mother to send me the entire correspondence. She had burned them because I married American. She got mad. I don't have anything anymore.

SG: When you wrote her, did she respond to you usually?

MK: Oh, no. For a long time, she didn't because, "How could you marry an American when your father was killed by American?" That was her answer. But actually, she didn't want me to get married. So when I came back to the East-West Center after University of Washington, I had one more semester to go. And then at that time, first international student organization was formed and everybody had to run for offices, and I wasn't going to run for anything, but somebody played a dirty joke on me. They put my name as a secretary, running for secretary, and I didn't know what secretary meant, but I had to give a political speech. And somehow people liked me, and election came, and then later on, and then I won against American student from New York in political science department. She was much more suited to the position than I did, but that's the way election was. Later on, I learned that most of the Japanese male students, mostly men anyway, voted for New Yorker. Most of the American students voted, men voted for me, so it was so funny. [Laughs] That's what I learned. But my academic study really suffered because of this, but I had a great time. I became a kind of, I must say I became like a playgirl in a way because I'm doing more political things than the academic study really when it comes down to it. I'm sure as far as microbiology department was concerned, it was a great disappointment to have me as a student there because why did I choose microbiology in the first place? I never studied microbiology. Going into, directly into the graduate school is so ridiculous. But I was looking, we had, according to my dean, he said that bring mutual understanding between East and West, so I didn't think that I had to study, you know. So I came to the University of Hawaii and then microbiology, I had to choose a subject, I was told. Then I said, "Well, I don't know what to choose. I don't know what this is." But I said, "My name is Michiko and, hey this is MI," you know, so that's why I chose microbiology. Isn't that crazy? That's why after me, of course of the mistake they made, they required English. The applicants had to take English examinations, I think. So the more I think, English teachers came than a person like me. I was just sheer lucky.