Since then:

Let me digress a bit to tell you how I ended up at ASIJ in the first place. In 1941, my father, then, a budding actor in Japanese Theater, and a reluctant soldier in the Pacific War came home injured. During his brief R&R, he produced me and had his last visit with his family. He was sent back to the front line in Southeast Asia and killed in Burma. I only have one picture of him since everything we had was destroyed during long fire bombings of Tokyo. When I was ten, my mother married my stepfather, a “Gaijin” from California. He worked as an artist for Tokyo office of J. Walter Thompson Co., an advertising company.

One day in late 1950’s, my stepfather made an announcement that we were going to the U.S. in a few years. Aki and I are going to colleges in America! So, we went through a crash course in English at Nishimachi School for a year, then on to ASIJ. My first three months at ASIJ were a blur. I didn’t understand what anybody was saying too clearly. But thanks to ASIJ and all of you folks, things started to click little at a time, and by the senior year I was ready for college in the US.

Aki was already at Cal Berkeley, but since I dropped out of Spooner’s physics class, I couldn’t get into Berkeley. That was just as well in retrospect, since I was not cut out to be a Cal student. Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, CA was as alien as any place in the USA at the time, not knowing I would eventually spend total of over 35 years as a student and as a chemist.

As I was graduating from Cal Poly in 1966, Uncle Sam was waiting to snag me. I don’t know how many of you were able to dodge the draft, but I surely couldn’t and got drafted into the US Army. I spent two months at Fort Bliss, Texas for basic training in the middle of summer, and I can attest to you that there is no bliss anywhere within 50 miles of Fort Bliss. My thinking at that point was that things were not going to get any better…It might get worse, like getting my butt shipped to Nam. I heard horror stories about Nam, especially from Asian GI’s, that they literally got shot at from both sides!

But things didn’t get worse; they actually started to look good after the basic training. I was ordered to go to the U.S. Army Natick Laboratories in Natick, Mass. No one in the entire Fort Bliss Headquarters’ office had ever heard of this place. But that was fine with me. I wanted to go as far away as possible from Nam. Not only did Natick Labs keep me away from combat actions in Nam; it provided me with valuable experience as a research biochemist. It dawned on me just then, how ironic it would have been if I was sent to the Southeast Asia to fight yet another war and get killed near where my father died.

In the second year at Natick, I met a local girl, a civilian working at the Labs, and we eventually decided to get married. She was a student at Boston University, taking a break from her school for a year. She eventually finished her degree from State University at Framingham. The first two years were like a dream as we spent lots of time outdoors, skiing all over New England in winter and camping and playing tennis during the rest of the year. After my Army stint, I got a job as a food microbiologist/food technologist at Best Food Research Center at Waltham, MA, and we bought our first house with one acre of pine grove in Hudson, MA. The research facility moved to Union, New Jersey and we followed to New Jersey. After my son, Daryl, was born (1971), I started thinking about being back in California where the rest of my family was. I made a phone call to my alma mater and talked to the Head of the Biology Department; he remembered me and offered me a job over the phone. That was 1973. It was meant to be a transitional job until I found a better job down in the LA area, but here I am still here.

I will retire within the next two years, more likely in a year, depending on whether I want to spend more time surfing or going to work. During those twenty-eight years here in San Luis Obispo, CA, my daughter, Michelle, was born (1974), and several years later, my wife and I got a divorce. I worked and raised my two kids by myself for a few years until I met my present wife, Cathy. We got married in 1982. My third child, Andrew, was born in 1985. Five of us have had a nice life together doing what families do with growing kids.

Right now Daryl, a college grad with a degree in MIS, is married and lives near my house. Michelle is going to school in CT. She is going to be a physician’s assistant. Andrew is a sophomore in high school, with an ambition to become a lawyer when he grows up. My spare time? You’ll find me playing tennis, racquetball, kayaking, biking, or hiking, and oh, my latest passion…surfing.