<Begin Segment 24>

TI: Okay. So I'm going to jump around. So we already talked about you going into, being inducted and going to the military. So I want to now go after that and talk about after you were discharged. What did you do then? What was the next thing you did?

KO: I was discharged late in December of '46, like December the 21st or something. Then I went to the University of Portland, asked for admission to begin January. So it was almost right after Christmas vacation or something I started school in January.

TI: So you didn't take any break at all, you just went right from one to the other. And I'm guessing that at this time, your mother and older sisters, or one of them, are now reestablished in Portland? What kind of work are they doing? Are they back in the hotel business, or what are they doing?

KO: My sister, Hisako, and her husband bought a hotel in Portland after they came back from camp. And that was 1945, and my brother-in-law, Hisako's husband, died of a heart attack in early 1946. But I don't know, my sister was really quite astute in business. There's a whole bunch of stuff that happened, the city was building a new off-ramp from a bridge and they wanted her property, and she negotiated with them and had to relocate. She bought, with that money, she bought two hotels and then had Mother take care of one and the other.

TI: And this was Hisako that did this?

KO: [Nods]

TI: Okay, good. So yeah, so they're there, you started at the University of Portland, and I'm guessing on the GI Bill, so that's being paid for. And what were you studying?

KO: I started in the School of Business, but in '48 decided to go into education.

TI: And is this when you transferred to Lewis and Clark?

KO: Right.

TI: And so tell me why education?

KO: Well, my sister Masako was a teacher's aide in camp, talked about the joys of being in a classroom with a bunch of kids and so on. And in camp, I was in this baseball group of kids, but I was demoted from my age. When I was first assigned to play baseball in camp, in assembly center, the Showa organization of teams had a Class A and a Class B team. The Class A teams were like your dad's caliber of play. And then they had a junior -- I don't say a junior group -- but the Class B team was just below that, and I was assigned to play Class B baseball, but I was a third string catcher on that team. And then the fellow who organized the whole organization started a Class C team of kids who were a year or two younger than I. But I was assigned an everyday position with the Class C team, so I elected to play Class C. But all the other guys on the team were a year or two younger than I am. So putting it the other way, I'm the oldest guy on the Class C team. But anyhow, in camp, I was the oldest of this group of kids, but there were a lot of smaller kids that I saw playing football and baseball, too. And I showed up on the playground, and I don't know if they asked me or whether I imposed myself on them, but I became their coach and mentor.

TI: And so it seems like you liked that role, of mentoring younger students.

KO: Yeah, yeah.

TI: So that kind of made you think that education would be an opportunity to continue that, where you could continue to mentor younger...

KO: Right, right.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2014 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.