<Begin Segment 12>

VO: And were most of the customers the Japanese community?

YM: They were all Japanese community. I don't remember ever seeing a Caucasian face in the store in the early part of the business.

VO: And then... so at that point, you were finishing up seventh and eighth grade.

YM: Went to Lincoln High School, and I went to Lincoln High School for four years.

VO: And then what was your education after that?

YM: I decided I wanted to go to the University of Oregon, so I went down to University of Oregon for four years.

VO: What did you study?

YM: I majored in business and Far Eastern studies. I was planning to, I was hoping to go into the foreign service, but they didn't accept me.

VO: So you actually pursued the foreign service?

YM: I did go for an interview, but at that time I think most of the foreign service people were coming out of the Ivy League schools, and they weren't looking for people from the West Coast. They were just being nice.

VO: And you were... your major was Far...

YM: Far East studies. So I studied Japanese and Japanese history and Japanese literature, Chinese literature and Chinese, Russian literature, geography, everything about the Far East.

VO: And what was that experience like of coming to the University of Oregon?

YM: It was shocking. [Laughs] And you know, I was never really in the mix of a Caucasian friends and group who were living together, Caucasians, so it was quite different.

VO: Because up until that time, you'd grown up within the Japanese community?

YM: Pretty much so. Not so much outside acquaintances or friends, close friends.

VO: What kinds of impressions do you have of that time?

YM: It was a good time. [Laughs] I had a good time in college. I didn't study that hard, but I had a good time.

VO: Well, tell us a little about your social life in the fraternity.

YM: I married -- not married, I met this fellow my freshman year from Hawaii, and we became friends and we're still friends. And he and I decided we wanted to pledge a fraternity on campus. And we knew that none of the fraternities were accepting any Asians or blacks, but there was one that was accepting it, so we decided to pledge that house, which was Tau Kappa Epsilon. And I was... we were the first Asians to be in a fraternity, and I was the first Asian to sit on the interfraternity council. So I guess it's kind of a groundbreaking... at that time I didn't think it was, but as I think back, I guess it was. And I had no resistance from in the fraternity or even outside on the campus directly.

VO: Well, you were saying that the fraternities, the other fraternities didn't accept...

YM: They didn't accept Asians at that time, or sororities then, either.

VO: Or anybody, you were saying, that no African Americans or Jews.

YM: Yeah, the Jews had their own sorority, I mean, fraternity. They had a sorority, too, but I remember the fraternity house, the Jewish fraternity house.

VO: So it sounds like you adjusted.

YM: Yeah, I think so. I really adjusted real quickly and made a lot of good friends on campus.

VO: So you felt accepted in the fraternity and you still have some of those friends.

YM: Lot of the fraternity members at that time were returning veterans, so they had more of an open mind than a lot of the younger kids that were in fraternities. So they, the fraternity really emphasized a scholarship to study. So that was good. Kept me in line. [Laughs]

<End Segment 12> - Copyright (c) 2013 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.