Peggy Takahashi | Interview 2 | January 27, 2022

FARRELL: Okay, this is Shanna Farrell back with Peggy Takahashi on Thursday, January 27, 2022. This is our second interview for the Japanese American Intergenerational Narratives Project and we are speaking over Zoom. Peggy, when we left off, we started to talk a little bit about your education and I wanted to talk to you a little bit more about that today as we get started. So, you went to public school for grade school and you were supposed to go to one elementary school and then you ended up at another. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

TAKAHASHI: Yes, the elementary school that was closest to where I lived was literally one block away, but there were no Asians in that school and my parents were concerned that I 00:01:00might be the brunt of bullying. Another elementary school, which was about six blocks away, had at least another Asian child -- might have been Chinese, might have been Japanese -- but they thought that would kind of dilute it even a little bit. One of my grandmother's friends lived in that district, so we borrowed [her address to be eligible to attend that school]. Back then the borrowing was a lot easier, so we borrowed her address and I was able to attend that school. I don't know if it had been any worse if I had gone to like San Fernando Elementary School. I ended up going to O'Melveny. That's how that came about. Again, it was based on their apprehension and fear that my being the only Asian child at a school might cause issues.

FARRELL: At the 00:02:00elementary school that your parents wanted you to go to where there were a couple of other Asian American children, did you feel like that was ever an issue there?

TAKAHASHI: I still got beat up, I still got name-calling. I mean the war had ended less than fifteen years before I started elementary school, so there was a lot of [resentment toward the Japanese] -- December seventh was a really an awkward day going to school. Things like that. My moving to that more distant elementary school, I don't think it really helped; I don't think having other Asian kids [helped]. There were other Mexican kids who were really nice. There were some really nice kids there that didn't make fun of me or do anything mean to me, but there were kids who did.

FARRELL: You 00:03:00started grade school in 1964 and because of when you were born, [what was] the timeline there?

TAKAHASHI: Yeah, the timeline was that back then you could start in January. There were two starts, in the fall and in the spring, and my birthday was in March. I was within that window when I could start in January and not wait until September, so I wasn't quite five when I started.

FARRELL: So you were on the younger end throughout the K-12?

TAKAHASHI: Yes.

FARRELL: Okay. Did you feel like that had any impact on you, or was just sort of how it was?

TAKAHASHI: I didn't think about it one way or the other. [I was an only child who grew up among adults and didn't play much with kids my age until I went to school.]

FARRELL: Yeah, okay, okay, that makes sense. When you were in school, either when you're in elementary, junior 00:04:00high, high school, did you have any favorite subjects?

TAKAHASHI: Well, my mom was a math person. An interesting story about her is that when the season ended and she was in her sixties at the time, she decided, "I should look into getting a high school GED in this country." She took the math placement exam at an adult school that was within walking distance of where we lived. The principal of this adult learning center, and it's public, called her in and said, "You know you at your age, you have scored the highest that I've ever seen in this math placement exam." She remembered all of her algebra, all of it. She couldn't believe that someone my mom's age would be scoring in the nineties on that math placement 00:05:00exam. My mom ended up just going because she liked it. She took some Spanish classes, but she did never get her GED, but she just was curious. English and history, she's [like], " I can't remember all this stuff in history," but my mom pushed me in math.

FARRELL: Okay. I was going to say the abacus really paid off for her.

TAKAHASHI: No kidding. [laughter] Her friends would tell me when we visited Japan, "Oh, your mom was such a math whiz."

FARRELL: Oh wow, and so she pushed you in the direction of math when you were growing up?

TAKAHASHI: Yeah.

FARRELL: Okay. How did that manifest? How did she do that?

TAKAHASHI: Oh God, drills and she was the stereotype of what you read of as the tiger mom. If there were Kumon, she would've made me go there, but extra drills, more stuff to do because they didn't give much 00:06:00 homework.

FARRELL: Did you like math?

TAKAHASHI: Not the way she did. Later on, she didn't get past algebra 2. When I got to surpass, when I got to trigonometry and calculus, she was like always in awe, "Oh, I never got there." It was fun because I knew more than Mom. [laughter]

FARRELL: You could drill her. Yeah. You were in the GATE program, the G-A-T-E program. Can you tell me a little bit about what that is? I'm not familiar with it.

TAKAHASHI: It was a gifted and talented program. I'll tell you a very funny story. That I was in it and I was in fourth or fifth grade, somewhere in there, and I got tested. Now in retrospect, I realize that it was a classic IQ test with the beads and the whole thing. It was right 00:07:00before Thanksgiving -- the day before Thanksgiving and this is when the three days before Thanksgiving kids went to school -- but there was a special lunch where you could get a hot lunch. I got the money to do that, those special days to go lunch. The guy there who did the testing to me as a little kid was ginormous; I mean he was huge. I was in this room and in my little kid head, he filled up the room. I was half scared of him and then I kept thinking, am I going to miss lunch because of this crazy thing? And guess what? After that test, I got pulled out of the GATE program [laughs] because I think I didn't do very well. In middle school, I got tested again. This time, it was with a nice, young 00:08:00woman and a couple of younger people, and I didn't have any pressure, I didn't feel anything. They were nice, they were sweet, they were young and I got put back into the GATE program. [laughs] But it's very funny.

FARRELL: Yeah, it's interesting how that stuff matters. It makes a difference.

TAKAHASHI: Why they would have this very, very large person testing this kid, and I was concerned that he wouldn't fit in the chair. I was looking and I was thinking, how are you fitting on this tiny chair? [laughter]

FARRELL: That's funny. You were also a voracious reader as well. What kind of things were you reading?

TAKAHASHI: Anything that Scholastic had to offer. You know the little paper? [There used be a little booklet students got at school where kids could order books cheaply.] Yeah. My parents would indulge me and let me buy whatever I wanted as long as it was for school. I didn't grow up in a wealthy household by far, not, I mean I didn't even have my own room, 00:09:00and the tights that I wore when I was a little kid, because it was cold and you had to wear dresses back then because you couldn't wear slacks. I'd have tights and they would call it -- they're "patches" because they were always patched up in the knees. We couldn't afford to get new ones and every time I fell -- and I fell fairly frequently on the playground -- she would patch. Tights were called patches because they were always patched. But books, whatever I needed for school, resources were always made available. I met a friend in middle school who liked to read but until junior high, I wasn't interested in reading at all, and it was an influence of a friend that got me into reading.

FARRELL: That's great. Were there any stories that you were particularly drawn to or types of stories?

TAKAHASHI: Anything. I would read 00:10:00anything and then as I got older, my parents didn't supervise anything, so I was reading stuff that was way, way mature. Miller -- Arthur Miller. Things that were fairly mature in content and subject matter. I was reading and they didn't know any better.

FARRELL: Yeah, and when you were in school, were there any hobbies or activities that you were involved in, like extracurricular activities?

TAKAHASHI: No, other than piano. I took piano lessons all the way through and practiced piano; we had a little upright. But extracurriculars, no, because that would require someone to be at home to take me and do stuff with me, and they were always working. There weren't too many clubs on campus that I can 00:11:00remember. No.

FARRELL: When you were in school, did you ever learn about incarceration?

TAKAHASHI: Not until I was in eleventh grade -- American history. First and only time.

FARRELL: Okay, and you had a teacher, Allen Hogle?

TAKAHASHI: Yeah Dr. Hogle.

FARRELL: I'm pronouncing that wrong. Dr. Hogle. And he was teaching more about that, is that right?

TAKAHASHI: Yes, he took that one paragraph in the US history textbook and spent a couple of days on it -- a couple of days meaning a couple of hours and saying what happened, what led to it. Executive Order 9066, what the underpinning roots of how this happened along the West Coast, the economics of why that happened 00:12:00versus the party line in the textbook, which was this is to protect us, right? To protect us. It was eye-opening because, for me anyway, that he is actually criticizing what's in the textbook and not believing what's there. For someone like me growing up, you always took the printed word at face value and you never thought critically. "Wait, is this BS or what?" But his criticizing or describing what really happened and the underpinnings of that incarceration opened my 00:13:00eyes in terms of looking at everything much more critically than at face value.

FARRELL: Yeah, oh, I was going to ask what that was like for you, too. It's opening your eyes and you're thinking more critically, and you're learning how to think critically. What was it like for you, because this also history was connected to your family? Did you make those connections, did it feel personal?

TAKAHASHI: Oh, yeah, it certainly felt personal. I would go home and ask my dad about it. What was interesting was there'd be this sudden chill in the room and he would say, "You know, that happened in the past." He wouldn't talk about it. When I pressed him, he would say, "It wasn't all that bad," and then he would just get quiet. He wouldn't talk about it very much. I would see remnants of stuff, like there was a 00:14:00bag, there was a canvas bag with their number on it. I don't know where that canvas bag went, but it was a canvas bag I think that was part of their evacuation that they could take. I've seen those bags in some pictures, I've seen people with suitcases, and I remember seeing it somewhere.

FARRELL: When you were learning from Dr. Hogle, were there images of those bags that you saw and then you made the connection, like, "Oh, I've seen this at home"?

TAKAHASHI: I think I saw that at home. Oh, and then we had cutlery that said "US Army" on it. I said, "Where did you get this?" They said, "When we left the camps, we took this cutlery to start out with." I think I may still have it. I think I use it for the cat food, but it has the imprint of 00:15:00US Army on it, and I think it's from those days. I started making those connections back then, but the direct questions that I would ask my dad just were oftentimes stonewalled.

FARRELL: Did you start to do any thinking or research or becoming more interested in this history after that?

TAKAHASHI: Yes, I did. I have a whole shelf of books on it. Michi Weglyn's book. There are a number of books. No-No Boy I read that in high school, and I asked my dad about it. That's when he came out and said, "Don't talk about that."

FARRELL: Oh, interesting, okay.

TAKAHASHI: I said, "Why?" He said, "Don't tell people." I said, "Why?" He said, "People will treat you differently if you let them know we said "no, no" to those questions. Every time I'd come back with 00:16:00why, he would just give me that, "Don't talk about it." That party line with him was, "Don't talk about it." There was a huge amount of shame on his part about having answered that question "no, no" and that how other people would view the family for having answered that question "no, no."

FARRELL: That silence around these things, that shame that you were interpreting, how do you feel like that impacted you?

TAKAHASHI: It made me wonder why there was so much shame when something illegal had been done to them, why is he feeling so much guilt about that. It was 00:17:00puzzling as a seventeen, eighteen-year-old. I didn't have the wherewithal to understand what that meant to him and at a time that there were people who hadn't answered "no, no." And that in the community, there was this stigma against people who had answered "no, no" and who had been moved to Tule Lake.

FARRELL: Did your dad ever open up about any of this at any point or largely remained silent?

TAKAHASHI: Never, never, never. When Alan and I went to that show [Exclusion] in the Presidio a few years ago and I saw the pictures of the conditions in Tule Lake, it really hit me. Manzanar was, he said, like going to summer camp, but he never spoke about the conditions in Tule Lake.

FARRELL: 00:18:00Yeah. I know this is a huge time jump, but that's okay. Can you tell me a little bit more about your experience going to the Presidio [Exclusion] exhibit? And just for context for people who might read this later, that was an exhibit in the Presidio, I want to say maybe four or five years ago?

TAKAHASHI: Something like that, yeah.

FARRELL: Yeah, and it was about incarceration, Order 9066, that kind of thing.

TAKAHASHI: Yes.

FARRELL: What was that experience like for you?

TAKAHASHI: Well, it was sort of the empathetic reaction to the pain that people had felt during that time of being uprooted, of moving, of losing a lot. What helped me was that knowing my family didn't lose everything. They still had a home to return to, but I know many people didn't at the end, they had to start all 00:19:00over again. But feeling that pain was emotional and it still is.

FARRELL: Did your daughter go with you to that exhibit?

TAKAHASHI: No, she didn't. She was I think studying abroad. She might have been in Japan at the time.

FARRELL: Okay, got it, okay. Thank you for sharing that. Going back to your high school time, you were part of a busing program in the mid-'70s. Can you tell me a little bit about that, what your experience was like in that program and where you were being bused to?

TAKAHASHI: John F. Kennedy High School in Granada Hills was a new high school. It was built in, I think, early 1970, '71, '72, and I might have been the second class coming in through there. San Fernando High School would have been my high school. It's much closer, I could've walked 00:20:00there, but due to redistricting, it might have been part of desegregation; I was part of the busing program. One bus went to John F. Kennedy High School from San Fernando and Pacoima, which is primarily Black, was one bus from there. There was another bus from the Knollwood area, which was a nice, tiny, new housing development, which is too far for students to walk, so there was a bus from there. I think there were three buses coming in, two I think part of desegregation and one just physical distance kind of a bus. We'd all line up and we'd go get on the bus.

What was interesting is that because I was in a Mexican community, the boys would line up and all the girls would get on the bus 00:21:00first. It was that kind of neighborhood. I remember one new guy came on and he started getting on the bus before a girl. Someone stopped him [and said], "Girls go in first." Those types of manners were great, and yet, on the way home, towards the end, near when I got to be sixteen, it was a great, great way to get my car. They would light up a doobie and pass it around on the way home. [laughs] The bus driver was just like, totally ignored it, ignored it. I said, "Hey, Mom, you know, they were lighting up a joint on the way home." "You're getting car when you're sixteen, yes." [laughs]

FARRELL: That's amazing, I love that. [laughs] A sign of the times.

TAKAHASHI: It's true, they were lighting up 00:22:00 doobies.

FARRELL: Yeah, I mean a sign of the times, but also a great way for you to get a car.

TAKAHASHI: Yeah, and they were passing it. I'd get one, "No, thank you." Then there was no shame in saying, "No, thank you," but they were very generous in sharing it. [laughs]

FARRELL: Oh, that's so funny; that's really funny. You also went to Japanese language school on Saturdays. How long did you attend Japanese language school for?

TAKAHASHI: I don't know. It wasn't until I was in high school, I know that. It might have been until sixth grade. Yeah, I don't remember going on Saturdays when I was in middle school or high school for sure.

FARRELL: Okay. Did you enjoy going?

TAKAHASHI: It was something to do on a Saturday. Yeah, it was other kids, it was from 9:00 to 00:23:00 3:00.

FARRELL: Yeah. What kind of things were you learning, and did those stick with you over the years?

TAKAHASHI: Well, mostly the Japanese reading and writing in proper grammar. I think it was a way for the Japanese community to make sure there was a place where the next generation of young Japanese kids could meet and get together and form relationships. It didn't work, but it was their idea of trying to get that community going. The language, I remember the syllabary and all that and the grammar, and that helped when I was started taking Japanese in college. But most of the oral language I had learned previously anyway.

FARRELL: That makes sense. And then for a period of time, you went to Buddhist temple on Sundays. What was that like for 00:24:00 you?

TAKAHASHI: I think it was the same deal in my parents' heads. "She needs some religious education. We better send her for about a year or so." This lasted not more than a year I don't think. Maybe a year and a half -- I don't remember exactly -- but it was what they thought I should get.

FARRELL: Towards the end of high school, as you're starting to think about applying to colleges or what comes next for you, what were your career aspirations or what were you hoping to do after high school?

TAKAHASHI: Because my parents, neither of whom had gone to college, my window was fairly narrow in terms of what women could do. My mom thought I could be a schoolteacher or I could be a secretary, right? Those were the kind of jobs 00:25:00that they could think I could do. And that my grandmother didn't even think I needed to go to college, I mean it was like that, and my mom said, "No, no, you're going to college," but didn't know of examples of career aspirations at the time for women. The customers that we saw who had careers were mostly men. They were doctors, maybe a nurse, that kind of very traditionally women-occupied positions.

FARRELL: And trades too.

TAKAHASHI: And trades, but the only trade they knew was farming.

FARRELL: Did your parents ever express interest in you later taking over the farm or taking over the farm stand?

TAKAHASHI: Oh, my dad would've been tickled, just tickled, if I had done this. He had a 00:26:00friend who was an Italian who was older than me that I think he would've liked if John and I got together. But John and I were like this, just so far apart in everything, that never would have happened. He would've been tickled, and it would've been successful business-wise, but no.

FARRELL: Not in the cards.

TAKAHASHI: Not in the cards, not in the cards, and not in the cards in terms of my running the show just because who wants to get up at 3:30 in the morning and do this? My mom and dad were like, "No, this isn't why we're working so hard is for you to do this too." That's typical of many of the Japanese community that were farming. There are very few Japanese farmers left unless they're large agribusiness farmers, they're big strawberry 00:27:00growers -- they're big -- but the original, small family farms, their kids became accountants, dentists, or doctors -- they left.

FARRELL: Yeah, yeah. I can think of a handful but not a lot. Like Masumoto is a family farm.

TAKAHASHI: Yeah, David Matsumoto, right. The peaches.

FARRELL: Exactly.

TAKAHASHI: Yeah.

FARRELL: But, yeah, yeah, that's interesting.

TAKAHASHI: Yeah, including my lawyer friend, I don't know if his family is still farming, and his brother is a doctor, and he's still in Fresno. He lives in Oakland, but he goes back. I have to ask them if they still kept the farm or if somebody is renting it, I don't know.

FARRELL: Yeah, that's interesting. I think sometimes it has to do with we are working this hard, so you can have better.

TAKAHASHI: Yes.

FARRELL: Also, I think the farming, it becomes 00:28:00less viable to make a good living as a farmer, as well as you know.

TAKAHASHI: Yes.

FARRELL: Yeah, it's like the two-fold thing there. You went to Pomona College, and you were there from 1976 to 1980. What drew you to Pomona? Why did you want to go there?

TAKAHASHI: This is all serendipitous. Originally, the plan was for me to apply to UCLA and Cal State Northridge would be my backup school. I would apply to two schools. The college counselor at my high school was really a nice guy, and he took a handful of the students he advised to Claremont Colleges, and we got a tour there. You have to understand that in 1976, from a demographic standpoint, high school student, the number of high school students were at an ebb. The baby 00:29:00boomers had come to an end, those babies from baby boomer age. I didn't do well on my SATs -- I don't know what I got, it was under 600, whatever -- it was not very good. I can say with 100 percent certainty I would not get into Pomona College today, but then, I got in. I got a very decent scholarship from them. I applied, my parents filled in whatever the FAFSA equivalent was, and I got money from the state. My parents said, "You want to go there?" and I said, "Yeah." It would've been nothing for me to go to UCLA because UCLA also gave me a scholarship, but they said, "Oh, you want to go there? Okay, we'll make it happen." They didn't know what was going on, but they knew that if 00:30:00I wanted to do something and it was education related, they were going to make it happen.

FARRELL: How far was Pomona from where you grew up?

02-00:30:12

TAKAHASHI: An hour.

FARRELL: An hour, okay, so it wasn't too far.

TAKAHASHI: Yes, and I came home every weekend for the first year and cried on the way home. It was both my mom and I, just pathetic, it was totally pathetic. What a nightmare that was before.

FARRELL: Yeah, I mean, it's a big step. Did you start off as a premed major?

TAKAHASHI: Yes.

FARRELL: Okay, what made decide to start as premed, and why did you end up switching?

TAKAHASHI: In high school, I was valedictorian. I had gotten straight A's all the way through, all the science classes, all the math classes. Fine, fine, fine. I didn't realize that I would be at Pomona competing with kids who had gone to schools like Phillips Exeter, Andover. Here I 00:31:00thought in high school I'm hot shit in a dixie cup, and I land at Pomona and I'm in the bottom thirty, [laughs]. Really it was an eye-opening, humbling experience to go there and realize, "Oh no, you are most certainly not hot shit in a dixie cup." I realized no, my preparation in high school really didn't -- and I wasn't quite ready to do the kind of work that I would have needed to do to be premed. I wasn't driven enough to do that, and I'm very honest about that. I mean I have the smarts, I could've done it, but I just didn't see it in me at the time. I think maybe that is a maturity level, maybe if I had been a year older.

FARRELL: It's a different sort of commitment, too, where you're committing to all these years of 00:32:00school and all of this work and that's your life for so long too. I think that that part is a big choice.

TAKAHASHI: Yeah, and I wonder if I had started kindergarten a year later whether the whole thing would have been -- I would have had more maturity of, yeah, I'm willing to make that commitment.

FARRELL: Oh, interesting.

TAKAHASHI: But I don't know. And then I just bounced into Asian studies because it was fun, it was interesting, I would be able to go to Japan for a year and catch up and see people and improve my language. My parents were in the background saying, "So what are you going to do this with this? What you could do in this major?" They never harassed me. I mean it was something that they would ping me with once a year, but my mom was so happy that I was getting in touch with my Japanese roots that 00:33:00she never discouraged me.

FARRELL: This was at the start of Asian American studies as well. I mean it had been established, [it was] the first few years that that had been around.

TAKAHASHI: Right, and this was not Asian American studies, this was Asian studies.

FARRELL: Oh, I'm sorry, okay, okay. Okay.

TAKAHASHI: So it was really about the roots in Asia.

FARRELL: Okay, thank you for clarifying that. What kind of classes were you taking?

TAKAHASHI: A lot of Asian, there were language classes, there were economic history classes. Leon Hollerman taught a lot of it. He had been part of SCAP [Supreme Commander for the Allied Power, aka General MacArthur]. He had been there after World War II and he could vividly describe what he saw and the climb that Japan had made postwar. The pictures of Tokyo after World War II, it was just leveled; there was nothing here. But then you point it out 00:34:00that what Japan had was old technology, what the US and SCAP brought in was the latest technology at the time free because the US after the war had anticipated that Japan would be on the US dole for a generation, for at least twenty years, not anticipating that they would -- Toyota Loom came up and that was the genesis of Toyota Motors -- they started with silk and then it went, "I think we'll get into cars." Oh, Honda started with generators. These are all post-World War II companies built on need and then exploded, just out the door. So that was all very interesting to study, it was very interesting to study, and part of my interest in business might have stemmed from there.

FARRELL: You had also visited Japan a few times 00:35:00before you had started college, the first time when you were four, the second time when you were eleven. How did those trips to Japan help you when you were in college and studying Japanese history?

TAKAHASHI: They helped in that there was a personal connection to the people there, to relatives there. I had a positive affiliation with Japan just from those earlier visits. When I went to college, it was a different experience in that I was living with a homestay family who weren't relatives. They were a wonderful homestay family. It was just different in that I was older and I could do things on my own versus when you're eleven, you're sort of 00:36:00tied to whatever your mom is doing and so that was a different freedom, kind of freeing experience for me. [coughs] Excuse me.

FARRELL: Before we get to you going to Tokyo, were there any other influential professors that you had?

TAKAHASHI: That time was Stanleigh Jones who was the program director there from -- and it just happened they rotated program directors who were with the students between Cal State LA, Pomona, and another school -- I don't remember the other school. But it included this consortium of schools that went to Waseda University included students from Kalamazoo College, Cal State, LA, the Claremont Colleges. There were a number of different schools that were part of 00:37:00that consortium, at least seven or eight.

FARRELL: And then you also studied with -- was it Yasuko Takata?

TAKAHASHI: Oh, Takata-sensei, she was my Japanese language teacher, and she was really great. In my senior year, I took a class with two of them [Stanleigh and Takata-sensie] and me. It was great, and I did my thesis in Japanese and wrote it in Japanese. It was looking at Japanese folktales. I really enjoyed the major there and the school was very generous in allowing me to pursue different things. In between Stanleigh and Takada Sensei, it was a great experience.

FARRELL: You had studied abroad in Tokyo for a 00:38:00year. Can you tell me a little bit more about what that was like to be there as an adult?

TAKAHASHI: Well, in as much as I said it was freeing, I was not that adventuresome, partly because I didn't have a lot of money. I taught English on the side, which got me some money, and the most adventuresome thing -- I didn't travel. Like Sami was doing all sorts of things, and she was doing her JET thing, but she was making money, too. The most adventuresome thing I did when I was there was I had heard about Koyasan, Mount Koya; it's not too far from Osaka, about an hour and a half or so away. I had asked my cousin, "Gee, during winter break, I'd like to go up there and see what it's all about." He said, "It's really cold," and I said, "Yeah." He said, "Well, I'll make arrangements so that you can spend the 00:39:00night at a temple." I said, "Okay, great." So I took the train up there and I walked around. It was just cedar trees. It's basically one big cemetery with temples dotting throughout. But I got there early in the afternoon and walked around and walked and walked and walked, and it was cold.

We got to the little temple where I was going to stay and they were so friendly. [laughs] This is a hilarious story. It's a Zen place, so it was vegetarian dinner, and I was fine with that. I asked what time their services were in the morning, so they said it's 6:30 or 7:00 or something like that, and I said I'd like to go. So that night, they bring dinner because they didn't expect you to go to the main hall for dinner because I was the only guest there because people with any sense don't go there in the 00:40:00winter. They bring me my dinner and that was around 6:00. They came back and checked in on me around 8:00. They said, "Everything fine?" I said, "Yes, fine." They came back around 9:00. At least twice, they came in and checked in on me, "Are you warm enough?" "Oh, I am, I'm fine, I'm great, and I'll be there tomorrow morning bright and early." I get up bright and early the next morning and attend the sutra readings and then I go back in my room and there's breakfast there in my room. There's a little tin of beef that they had cooked. I don't know where they get it from, it was really yucky beef, but I ate it anyway because, well, they got it for me, just for me. They're vegetarian, but it was so sweet of them [to do this for the] American. When my cousin made the reservation, they didn't know who I was. They thought it was my cousin and they said, "Oh, we thought it was going to 00:41:00be So-and-So." I said, "Oh, that's my cousin." I'm explaining all this in Japanese, and they finally figure out I'm American. Yeah, I'm American, I'm studying at Waseda," blah, blah, blah. So, the next morning the tin of beef comes out.

And then I go home, back to my cousin and my aunt's house, and I told them about what happened the night before like. "Why did they keep checking in on me?" They were laughing; they were both howling. They said, "You know what? Young woman going to a temple like that in the middle of winter, typically they think that you're going up because you've been jilted, you've broken up with somebody, and you were going to commit suicide. They were worried that you were going to do something like that." [laughs] I thought, whoa, wow. So that's why they kept checking in on me. When I showed up in the morning for the morning sutra reading, they looked at me like, 00:42:00ah, she's alive.

FARRELL: A sigh of relief from them?

TAKAHASHI: Yeah, yeah, kind of. I could pick up on these vibes but I couldn't quite interpret why they were giving off these vibes. My cousin was saying and my aunt was saying, "Well, a young woman, (a) nobody goes there in the wintertime and (b) a young woman going up there in the wintertime -- you know?"

FARRELL: Oh, that's so interesting and you obviously found out about that later. And it all made sense to you?

TAKAHASHI: Yes, well, all of the weird vibes I was picking up made sense to me after they explained because they didn't tell me any of this beforehand.

FARRELL: Yeah, wow, that's quite a story. It also sounds really beautiful up there as well.

TAKAHASHI: It is, it is. The fact that there was no one else around made it even more so. It was just so cold and 00:43:00the huge cedar trees.

FARRELL: Oh yeah. When you were in Japan, what was it like for you to connect with your family, your cousins, your aunts, your extended family?

TAKAHASHI: Well, my cousins were pretty much older than me, like we're talking twelve, thirteen years older than me, but my aunt was always very sweet. She's an aunt by marriage. She's my mom's sister-in-law, but they had gone through the war together, World War II, and so they were pretty closely tied. They were bonded and so I was really like her little niece or grandchild. When I came and I was four years old and I pined after our dog Jumbo. I was like, who care about my dad. "The dog, I want to see Jumbo," I said. I just cried and cried and cried. You know what they did? They got a puppy for me, they got a 00:44:00puppy for me and it's a puppy. They had it over the in genkan, which is where we put up all the shoes and they kept it there. They had a little, tiny yard, but the yard would get destroyed by this puppy. I played with this puppy and my aunt had to clean up after this puppy all the time, but she did. After I left, they gave the puppy to some friend of theirs who wanted a dog. But that's what they did for me when I was four years old and pining away for our dog because I wasn't eating. I'm going, "I want to see my dog." Most people would've said, "Kid, get over it." But no, they got a puppy for me. Those memories, the fact that they had done that for me when I was a little, and I really liked this aunt. She was a really good cook to boot. She would always, whenever I 00:45:00would go to their home or go back at breaks, she would say, "What do you want to eat? What's your favorite things?" By the end, she would know what [I liked].

FARRELL: Yeah, you got those home-cooked meals?

TAKAHASHI: Mm-hmm.

FARRELL: Yeah, yeah. That's incredibly sweet with the puppy, and that's a great example of the connection there and how meaningful you were to them and that kind of thing, yeah.

TAKAHASHI: Yeah.

FARRELL: When you returned, did you have any sort of reverse cultural shock coming back to the States?

TAKAHASHI: A little. This was not as bad as it is now, and this is regarding safety, personal safety. When I was in Japan as a student, a college student, I could walk around any time of the day, night, get home, 10:30, 11:00, walk through the streets from the train, and not worry at 00:46:00all. I mean the worse that would happen is somebody is taking a leak over by the wall, that's it. I'd come back here and all of a sudden, I have to be a little bit more cautious about where I am and about my personal safety. That was a bit of a culture shock and the fact that in Japan, all throughout my visits, I've never had to drive. We've driven a little bit in Hokkaido and in Kyushu when we were taking a trip, and the trains and buses were not very convenient. But all through my student years, I never had a car. It felt normal to me to have a car here. So this constant pressure to drive here versus taking public transportation there was a culture shock. The fact that, 00:47:00despite the notion that Japan is very fast paced, that people think it's very fast, it's not; it's much slower. The fact that people take public transportation means that you have that kind of downtime a little bit to yourself. Even though you're jam-packed in the train, you're not stuck in traffic. That kind of downtime makes it a little less stressful and hectic.

FARRELL: As a New Yorker, I appreciate that because I do feel like there's a lot of time waiting for public transportation. Also, moving out here and getting a car, I understand what you're saying.

TAKAHASHI: It's different.

FARRELL: Yeah, it's different. And then you had decided to take a year off from school; what made you decide to do that?

TAKAHASHI: After I graduated from 00:48:00Pomona, I had no idea what I was going to do. I had considered applying to grad school right away and then I thought, you know what? I'm really not sure what I want to do. I asked my parents, "You think I could work for you, earn some money?" because thinking I would need money for grad school and I could help. They said, "Sure." They were cool about things like that and I've been that way with Sami. I've always told her life is not a race, so she took a gap year after high school. But I did that and really understood what farming was all about, the hard work and all of that, and they paid me. I lived at home and it was a good 00:49:00break, it was a really good mental break and helped me kind of regroup. Then I decided, I think I am going to apply for grad school in Asian studies at Cal because they had one of the better programs. Lo and behold, I got pretty much a full ride scholarship and came up here as a result. But during that one-year time, I really understood the kind of hard work and dedication my parents put in to their profession and how much it meant to them that there was a lot of pride in what they did. It was very clear that there was a lot of pride in what they did, how they did it, and the fact that they had such a loyal customer base.

FARRELL: Before we get to your time at Cal, I forgot to ask you before about your pilgrimages. You 00:50:00went on your first one in 1975, so that would have been while you were still in high school or at least before you got to Pomona. That was with Dr. --

TAKAHASHI: Hogle.

FARRELL: -- Hogle. Can you tell me a little bit your experience on that pilgrimage?

TAKAHASHI: Sure. He took two or three students on that first pilgrimage, and all that was there. It was a beautiful, crisp, clear day in April, and that was when the pilgrimages were taking place. It was just a gathering of people out in the middle of the desert, and there is this obelisk there in the middle, and that was all there was. A Buddhist priest was there and he did some sutras. There were some speakers and we heard from people who, at that point, had been incarcerated who were still there and what the experience was like. I remember one speaker 00:51:00saying specifically, "Yeah, you guys see it's really nice today, but it wasn't always like this." And then the following year, I went on my own and the wind was just tremendous, the sandstorm was just horrific.

FARRELL: Yeah, with those two very different days, one clear blue skies, one very dusty and windy, how did those impact your perception of conditions and what you thought you knew about camp?

TAKAHASHI: I am really glad I went that second time because I had read reports from people and various books -- it really described how those wind storms would come through and they would last for days and how difficult it was to keep the sand out of their [living quarters]. Because these are just these clapboard barracks that had been put up and the wind would just push the sand in, and everything will just get 00:52:00dusty and dirty, and they'd have dirt in their mouth. It was just really horrible and people who had medical conditions like asthma really suffered from something like that. The second trip made me realize that my dad, in some respects, had, sort of, sugarcoated his Manzanar experience. Maybe it was because he was in his twenties and maybe guys don't care about things like that, but if I were a woman, something like that and just this constant unpredictability of weather would just drive me nuts.

FARRELL: How did your parents, particularly your father, feel about you going on those pilgrimages?

TAKAHASHI: I don't remember, I honestly don't 00:53:00remember. I mean, my mom was more concerned that I drive there and be safe. My dad was kind of benign, I don't remember his overtly saying don't go, but I also don't remember him being encouraging. It was at that time when the redress movement had started and that was when he was really, "Don't get involved in that, don't get involved in that." He was much more focused on my not getting involved in that.

FARRELL: Yeah, can you tell me a little bit more about that -- how you were involved and what his reactions were like and why he was telling you not to get involved?

TAKAHASHI: We had a Japanese American community center not too far just like in the same block as the Buddhist temple. Somehow word had gotten out that there was this redress movement starting up and that was in the 00:54:00mid-70s with Phil Shigekuni and Sue Embrey, and they were getting people involved. I met them all and just start talking about that possibility and the immediacy of it all because my parents' generation -- the grandparents all died. When my dad found out that I was going to these meetings, he's like, "No, don't do that." I don't know. I said, "Why?" He said -- it was the old -- "You don't want to bring attention to yourself, this is not something you want to do." "But you earned this money. I mean, they put you away, they had no right to do that." "What happened has happened, yeah." He just did not want me involved. And then I started college and then I went to Pomona and school took 00:55:00 over.

FARRELL: When you went to Pomona and were in school, did you follow the way that the redress movement was shaking out?

TAKAHASHI: Just peripherally, just peripherally.

FARRELL: Okay, and, yeah, when you were there, were you involved in any student groups or anything?

TAKAHASHI: Oh, at Pomona? I must have been, but I was a real nerd. I had always studied, and the reason why I was a real nerd was I was coming home on the weekends to help during the spring, during the break, fall still. I was coming home and working on the farm, which meant I had to get all of my studying done during the week and I didn't have time to do much peripheral activities.

FARRELL: That makes sense, 00:56:00yeah. I guess fast-forwarding a little bit to when you were starting out at UC Berkeley, you started there in the fall of 1981 as an Asian studies master's degree candidate. Can you tell me a little bit about your time there, your experience, maybe some professors that you had or classes that you were particularly interested in?

TAKAHASHI: That was when I first encountered Chalmers Johnson. I took one of his East Asian history classes. It was an undergraduate class, but I could take it as a grad student because there were three or four other grad students who were taking that class because we would meet weekly as a seminar. He would give us additional readings and then we would have discussions about that. I also took a class with Scalapino, Robert 00:57:00Scalapino, but what was interesting is that everybody said, "Oh, Cal graduate school, they're going to eat you alive." A book a week was nothing; I mean Pomona was doing that. It was relatively easy and I was able to complete my coursework in that one year time.

And then I had applied somewhere in there for the Rotary Foundation Fellowship, which is a very generous fellowship just to go abroad. The fellowship, I was nominated for that fellowship by my sixth grade teacher Mrs. Elizabeth Cole's husband, who was a Rotarian. She had taken a shine to a friend of mine and me. She lived not too far from where my parents farmed, and she had a pool and she would invite us over. She was a really nice teacher and she just recognized that, oh, here's this little 00:58:00kid, her whole summer is spent working on the farm, and maybe it would be nice to just have her and her friend over once in a while. She'd have us over and we'd play in the pool and I got to know her husband. Her husband, we kept in touch all the way through until I graduated, and he had nominated me for this.

I applied and I got to the interview, and this is a really funny thing. They call me about scheduling the interview with the Rotary guys and there were five or six days on the table, but I didn't know what was happening because they called at nine o'clock at night. I had been asleep, I mean when you get up at 3:30 in the morning, you tend to be asleep by nine o'clock. So I was asleep, my parents were asleep, they called and I say, "Good morning." [laughs] I say, "Hello?" and I had to apologize. I said, "Yeah, we're 00:59:00asleep." He was really apologetic and got flustered, too, oh my goodness. And so I have that energy. [At the interview] they asked me a question about the incarceration. He said, "If anybody asks you about what happened to your parents and your family during World War II, how are you going to respond?" It was interesting, I said, "That's a hard question." I took a minute to collect my thoughts and they were looking at me. I remember this. I said, "This is a dicey way to answer it, but I think I have to do it this way." I said, "You know what happened was wrong, this is not the way our American system works. My dad and my uncles and aunts were all US citizens and it shouldn't have 01:00:00happened." That was it.

FARRELL: How did they respond to your answer?

TAKAHASHI: They just nodded their heads, but they didn't pursue it. It was a very short answer, just laying out what happened and why it was wrong.

FARRELL: Do you have a sense of why they asked you that?

TAKAHASHI: I don't know. It could've gone two ways, right? I could've toed the party line and said, "Oh, they were putting them away for their safety." Maybe they wanted just to see how I would respond.

FARRELL: That's interesting, but you did end up receiving the scholarship.

TAKAHASHI: Yeah, I did.

FARRELL: Yeah, yeah. It's also interesting that they didn't really have a reaction, that they didn't ask you follow-up questions, so it must have been like a 01:01:00hard thing to read.

TAKAHASHI: I mean these are half a dozen white guys.

FARRELL: Well, their feelings must have been hard for you to read about your response.

TAKAHASHI: Oh yeah.

FARRELL: Yeah, just the differences there.

TAKAHASHI: I mean there's this huge power structure, right, that the power difference, but at this point, I was like if they're not going to give it to me because I answer honestly, well then screw them.

FARRELL: Yeah, for sure. Did that did allow you to go back to Japan after your coursework was done, so were you working on your thesis there?

TAKAHASHI: Yes.

FARRELL: Okay, and can you tell me a little bit about what your thesis was on?

TAKAHASHI: Well, the thesis developed after meeting Father Robert Ballon. I went to Sophia University. I applied, got accepted, and he took me under this 01:02:00wing and invited me to his international management development seminars [IMDS], which were targeted at western, primarily European and American executives who were working in Japan to give them some understanding of how Japanese businesses worked. One of the things that he was keen on and steered me in the direction was how Japanese companies make decisions, decision-making in Japanese companies, which is it's very elaborate, very long and drawn-out process and that the decision being made and implementation are simultaneous. That unlike the US where a decision is made and then implementation happens, in Japan, because everyone is involved in the decision-making 01:03:00process. There's a series of stamps, the hanko and a lot of Nemawashi, which is root washing and people talk. Everyone knows this is what is expected of me from this decision and so when this decision is made, implementation is very fast, but it takes two years to get to the decision.

This is one of the things that Americans are faulted for in dropping that second World War II bomb in Nagasaki. That they dropped it very soon after, and that if they had understood Japanese culture a little bit more, that they would've realized, oh, they are back trying to figure out and talking to everybody and figuring out are we going to do the unconditional surrender, can we get consensus around that and do this thing. Because it was such a huge 01:04:00undertaking for the emperor to be able to say, "Okay, we're going to unconditionally surrender and we would be backing down." In that bumbling around and trying to reach that decision of unconditional surrender, the second bomb was dropped. There was no question that they were going to surrender unconditionally, there was no question. They knew it, but they just didn't react fast enough. If the US had waited just another day or so, lives would have not been lost.

FARRELL: It's interesting to hear that because when you look at that history from a US perspective, that's never a part of the conversation at all.

TAKAHASHI: No.

FARRELL: Yeah, that's really interesting. 01:05:00The second bomb dropping, World War II, was this part of what you were working on when you were abroad during your master's program?

TAKAHASHI: No, no. That was a connection I made later.

FARRELL: Got it okay, okay.

TAKAHASHI: That was a connection I made later, but I was just studying the way Japanese businesses made decisions and given how lengthy the process is. I then came to the realization that you know during World War II, that was probably what was going on.

FARRELL: Yeah, that's interesting, yeah.

TAKAHASHI: It's a cultural thing and then here in this country, we're known for making quick decisions but then the implementation doesn't quite happen.

FARRELL: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, and also what was it like for you to be studying these things given the fact that you grew up with a Japanese American father, a Japanese mother living in America, and then also you've been to Japan so many 01:06:00times, you were educated in California, having sort of -- I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you have a foot in both worlds, you have a relationship with both places. What was it like for you to be studying these things?

TAKAHASHI: Well, one of the reasons why Father Ballon steered me in the direction is that he said, "You will have an outsider's perspectives. A Japanese person can't study this because you can't ask a fish how it breathes, right? Most Japanese people, the way in which they operate is through consensus building anyway." When I was teaching in Japan [in 2003-04], that one year, there are a gazillion student clubs on campus -- a teddy bear club, I mean just a gazillion clubs. I realized 01:07:00that kids in Japanese universities, they don't go to learn very much. I mean, it's crazy, but I think how little they study, they go and they become part of these student organizations and they become socialized here. They become socialized to the hierarchy of the organization, which is then mirrored later on into corporate life. I talked to some Korean students, and it's the same way -- the function of the clubs in Korean universities is the newbies get all the scut work and then as you rise to become a senior, you take on leadership roles and that hierarchy is something that is respected so that when you go into a Japanese or Korean company, you are expected to observe. There are no job descriptions, there are hardly any job descriptions, but you start out and you watch what other people are doing. You watch and observe 01:08:00and that's how you get your training.

FARRELL: Your experience learning about these things and your time there, did it ever make you want to -- which I guess has happened for your later -- work in Japan after your master's degree?

TAKAHASHI: Well, I did work for somebody. I did part-time work for a woman who owned an art gallery, and it was a very trendy art gallery. It was through a relative's acquaintance. Her friend's mother owned the art gallery and she was working with people in the early '80s like Nam June Paik and Mapplethorpe, people who are really famous now but who were at the fairly budding 01:09:00stages. Keith Haring, he came and did a wall for her. My job for her, and I got paid fairly handsomely, was to translate letters. She would dictate letters to me in Japanese and I would type them out in English and then recite my Japanese version of what I typed to her. I think I was charging her eighty bucks an hour and I would go in like once a week and work maybe three or four hours. But she was a horrible boss to work for, just a horrible boss to work for. She treated all her employees really nastily. There was one day when I worked for ten hours straight because she had a whole bunch of stuff and she never offered me any water or food or anything like that. I was just like, "Okay, I'm going to take a break now and I'm going to go get something to eat and come back." And it made me wonder 01:10:00about what corporate life would be like there. My cousin said, "No, no, it's not that bad, it really isn't that bad -- she's just a very unusual person." But I made enough to fund trips to Hong Kong and things like that, so it was all right.

FARRELL: Yeah, and so you ended up returning to Berkeley after that. Before we talk a little bit about your continued studies, what was it like for you to live in the Bay Area especially having grown up in the LA area?

TAKAHASHI: I loved it, I loved it, I mean I had never known. I had always been comfortable in Southern California, I never thought I belonged there, and when I came up here, it just felt like home. It was just the atmosphere, the weather, the people, the 01:11:00diversity. In Los Angeles -- I've talked about this with other US students who are from there -- there are pockets, it's very segregated. Like here's the Black area and here's the Mexican area, and there isn't a lot of mixing. There's more mixing here. I mean in Oakland in the hills, there are Black families, there are Asian families, there are Mexican families, they're all middle class plus, but there's a much more mix here in the middle class areas than there ever was in LA.

FARRELL: Was that something you liked?

TAKAHASHI: Yeah, so that was something I liked, that was something I really noticed. And then there's a fact that because Southern California is so focused on the entertainment industry. It wasn't like that when I was really little, but I as I got 01:12:00into high school and college, it really became the entertainment hub, like Sylmar. I had no idea, but Sylmar is the porn capital of the world. Right?

FARRELL: Right.

TAKAHASHI: I always used to wonder, what are those great, big warehouse and a few buildings? Well, they're sound studios, right? Oh my goodness, so there's this focus in Southern California on the superficial and I always felt that.

FARRELL: It does tend to permeate everywhere.

TAKAHASHI: Yes.

FARRELL: I think can lend to LA being a little bit more transient as well.

TAKAHASHI: Yeah, maybe. It's superficial. Like I said, that started to really become much more prevalent in my high school and college years. It wasn't really like that. I mean there were some orange orchards and things like that in the San Fernando Valley and now, all we can do is talk about it. [All the orchards are gone, paved over houses.]

FARRELL: Yeah. When you moved to the Bay Area, did you find a 01:13:00 community?

TAKAHASHI: Well, I had a community of other grad students, and they were all overwhelmed with amount of work. I'm an introvert by nature, so I don't seek out groups, but I did meet a good friend who eventually introduced me to Alan, and we hung out a lot together with another friend, Dona. They were more dyadic relationships not group relationships.

FARRELL: Yeah, and can you tell me a little bit about how you met your husband Alan?

TAKAHASHI: So this is when I was applying for my MBA. I had met Reiko as part my Asian studies program, and she worked in his office. He was working as a geotechnical consultant up in Walnut Creek and I was applying for my 01:14:00MBA. I was up there handing in my application, and made copies, and I happen to go into her office with her, and ostensibly, we had lunch, and he was there. I see this guy at the end of the hall peeking and then he comes over and Reiko introduces us. He says, "Oh, you're here for the weekend? Well, why don't you both come over to my house for dinner?" His house was a rented room at a friend's place in -- oh well -- it's a nice, Portola Valley, but somewhere like that on the peninsula, it's a gorgeous house. He made dinner for us and that was in October when the time changes, so we always remember that. We just hit it off and my friend Reiko was like, "He's never going to be interested in me, but I can tell he's interested in 01:15:00you." On that basis, we communicated and exchanged letters because there wasn't any email and phone calls. He came down for work for Woodward Clyde, and we met down there.

After literally some dates, I decided to come and go to my MBA program at Cal versus UCLA. UCLA was higher ranked at the time, they had really wanted me to go there. I mean, I got calls from people who said, "Come, you could work for -- " So the guy, William Ouchi, who worked wrote Japan as Number One [this was actually Theory Z] was there [professor at UCLA], and he called me. He wanted me as a research assistant and I said, "Oh no." My parents would've wanted me to stay in LA, all of that, and I said, "Hmm, I'm going to try this guy out."

FARRELL: And that influenced your decision to go to Cal for your MBA? I'm glad that it 01:16:00worked out.

TAKAHASHI: Yes.

FARRELL: Yeah, how it all worked out.

TAKAHASHI: It all worked out.

FARRELL: But you also liked the Bay Area, too?

TAKAHASHI: Yeah, and that was the other clincher -- I didn't like LA.

FARRELL: Right, and you had already gone to Cal for your master's. Can you tell me a little bit about your MBA -- what were you were studying and how that rolled into your PhD program? If I'm getting the chronology right, you started around 1983?

TAKAHASHI: No, I started around 1986.

FARRELL: Okay, okay.

TAKAHASHI: The MBA was in '86. Oh, right and then I worked in between. After I got my master's in Asian studies, I worked in development at Pomona for about a year

FARRELL: Oh, okay, okay.

TAKAHASHI: And then I applied to the master's for the MBA. Started in 01:17:00'86, was in a class, and the admissions director at the time had been there one year and my class happened to have -- and they're not supposed to do this. She admitted 50 percent engineers in the class, mostly guys engineers. The math classes were -- I was so happy when, on the linear programming midterm, I got a ninety-two. Wow, and I've been struggling with linear programming, and Alan then helped me with making sure I got it and midterm, yay, only to understand that that was the median score, it was the median score. It was interesting, and I didn't like my classmates because it was an era of "greed" is good. It was in there somewhere that Ivan Boesky 01:18:00came and delivered a speech to the undergraduate class saying greed is good, and these engineer guys were all interested in going into FinTech and making tons of money. A lot of them did, I know people who retired a few years ago. I wasn't interested, that just didn't resonate with me.

What I ended up working on was just in time and what just in time was really about and did my thesis on that. My advisor Ernest Koenigsberg said, and I told him, "Yeah, I can't imagine working with these guys after I graduate, I don't think so." He said, "Why don't you apply for a PhD program? Do you mind being poor for another four, five years?" I said, 01:19:00"Well, I've been poor this long." "We'll get you a scholarship, a TA or RA-ship, and all that, and you have your health care covered and your tuition covered, more than likely, so why you don't you apply?" I got in, and that's what I started.

FARRELL: Can you tell me a little bit about your experience in the PhD program at Haas?

TAKAHASHI: It started out really well. I really enjoyed my classmates, I enjoyed the classes, I went through the whole thing. I do admit -- full disclosure -- I did have to retake my quals [qualifying exams]. Two of us did. but in my defense, I was moving my parents from Southern California to up here that summer and that was a big, big move.

It's only toward the end of my doctoral program that I had what I can think of as the 01:20:00troubles. I would like to read a statement if that's okay? I did receive a settlement from the University of California in 1996 and I reviewed the settlement two days ago with my attorney. The agreement doesn't include a confidentiality clause and the fact that I was awarded $95,000 suggests that there was merit to my claim. This is an embarrassing incident to the university and the faculty concerned and I believe it would be very foolish of them to open this door again. Here are some of the facts: My dissertation chair and advisor Professor Jim Lincoln of the Haas School of Business included significant portions from my dissertation proposal without attribution in a grant proposal to the Social Science Research Council in 01:21:00December of 1993. He stated that he and his coinvestigator had determined the work needed and had developed the research approach, much of this was taken straight from my dissertation proposal. While I had given him permission to use my work in the proposal, I had assumed as an academic that I would be cited. I had defended my proposal and it was nearing completion of the dissertation. I was pregnant at the time and was focused on completing my dissertation before my end of April due date.

Lincoln did withdraw his proposal but didn't adequately address my concerns regarding my role in his project since I would no longer be a grad student upon completion of my degree. Back in December, I sought the graduate division for advice, not knowing that this would start a formal investigation. The investigation took three years 01:22:00out of my life and consisted of the university making numerous procedural and factual errors. During this time, I was unable to complete my dissertation as I was too busy defending myself. The university formed a committee of inquiry consisting of professors Glenn Carroll and Russell Winer, both faculty in the Haas School and one in the Lincoln's department. They produced a report, which investigated the claim of use without permission when the actual allegation that they were charged to investigate was unacknowledged appropriation. Given that I had readily admitted that Lincoln had my permission to use my material, their report made my complaint look frivolous and insinuated that I did something wrong. I had to rebut this report.

Another university committee was formed consisting of faculty from outside of the Haas School, and they too produced a flawed 01:23:00report, which claimed that this was a misunderstanding that was due to ambiguities in university policies. I again had to rebut. In fall 1994, Professor Emeritus and former dean of the Berkeley 's graduate division Sanford Elberg was asked to be chancellor's representative. He reviewed the materials and conducted interviews. His final report of January 1995 was the first and only report that addressed the actual facts of the case. He concluded that what happened was plagiarism and agreed that my complaints against the investigating committees were justified. Despite repeated requests, the university did not release Professor Elberg's report to me until May 1, 1995. Again, due to further delays on the part of the university during the negotiations, the final settlement agreement wasn't signed until December of 1996, 01:24:00fully three years out of my life. I was only able to continue fighting because Alan supported me both emotionally and substantively as he had a job. He also was instrumental in helping me review and write all of the rebuttals to the university's misleading reports. Finally, our daughter Sami was born in 1994; she was a source of joy and kept the family grounded throughout this ordeal. My parents were supportive but mostly very worried about my future. My dad died in April 1995 not knowing what would happen to me.

FARRELL: Thank you for sharing that. I can't imagine that that was an easy period of time, especially while you were pregnant. If I ask you a question that you would prefer not to answer, please just tell me that -- that's no problem at 01:25:00all. I'm going to try to be thoughtful about the sensitivity of this. Given that this went on for such a long time, and became pretty high profile, I think, probably within the department, was there ever a point where you questioned how this might impact you in the future or why this was happening in the first place?

TAKAHASHI: There was certainly the question of why me and I have to continue fighting mostly because those reports impugned my 01:26:00integrity. They made it look and sound as though it was my fault. During this time, I also had heard rumors from students who had graduated and subsequently had jobs that "Hey, Peggy, I heard that you plagiarized something from Jim Lincoln." I said, "What, you heard that? It's the other way around." I had to keep fighting. Plus because of this proposal was out there with my dissertation, and Shanna, I was looking at the stuff yesterday, and I want to show you, this is the documentation, flex that. He wrote in his final report that they had taken in that proposal the substantive thrust of my dissertation and called it their own. I have to fight this, I mean I really did to the end and I think the 01:27:00university thought I would give up and go away, I really did.

FARRELL: What kept you fighting?

TAKAHASHI: Alan also was very, very upset at what happened. He was like, "Yeah, we're going to fight this thing." He had a job. I have heard of other instances like this in the shadows that students, they would have this happen, and they would just give up. [The university would drag their feet, ignoring their won procedures with no consequences. Most students just don't have resources to continue to fight.] They would just give up and either leave the program or just, fine, whatever, and buckle up, but it may have been ideas but not their dissertation.

FARRELL: Did they know you were pregnant at the time?

TAKAHASHI: Lincoln certainly did and then in the subsequent 01:28:00meetings in the committee investigations, I was out to here pregnant in the spring of 1995 when the investigations were happening. I honestly believe -- the committee members were all men -- and I think they thought I would just have a baby and then just go away.

FARRELL: What was it like for you to balance all of this with your pregnancy and then also raising a child since this went on for so long?

TAKAHASHI: Well, I was fortunate in that my parents lived just three doors down. I had helped them move up and they moved three doors down the street -- across the street and down the street, and so when Sami was a baby, they would help. As she got older, I mean it took two of them to change her diaper as she started squirming around more. But early on, babies sleep a lot and so I got my work done. How I got my 01:29:00dissertation, moving forward in that dissertation was Alan would get up early because Sami was getting up super early and I would get up and take care of her. Then I would go back to sleep for a little bit while he was giving her breakfast and then he would go to work and then there was the neighbor lady down the street who watched little kids. But when Sami was an infant, I think I would take her down to my parents' house and then I would work for my dissertation for two or three hours, go nurse her, feed her, and then come back, work. She'd take a nap and then I would work during that time, and then at night, after dinner, I would get a big chunk of time and stay up until midnight or so and get four or five hours and then Alan would take care of her, give her a bath and get her to bed and then I would 01:30:00work a big chunk of time and then go to sleep. I was sleeping in like four-hour chunks, three-hour chunks, but it really helped me, like focus, I have to do this, I only have two hours here and two hours there. That's how I finished my dissertation.

FARRELL: It sounds like that support you had was pretty integral to all of that.

TAKAHASHI: Yes. The support was super integral, and in between working on my dissertation, I had to write these rebuttals. I mean that's why it took -- yeah.

FARRELL: Yeah. You eventually were awarded with your degree in 1995, but you walked in 1994 between nursing Sami?

TAKAHASHI: Yes.

FARRELL: What was that like for you? Well, I guess it was two-fold, having the experience where you're working while you're nursing your child but also then finally being awarded your degree in 1995?

TAKAHASHI: I think I was kind of in a haze at that point. 01:31:00It's kind of anticlimactic and I think I filed in that fall. The whole process was just very, very bizarre. I wanted to walk in '94 because a friend of ours who was in the accounting department "hooded" me. ["Hooding" happens at commencement when a faculty member, typically the student's dissertation advisor, places the doctoral hood over their student.] There wasn't anybody in the business school who'd hood me. I wouldn't even ask anybody in my department, [then the Organizational Behavior Industrial, or OBIR, department]. I didn't even bother asking, I mean I was persona non grata as far as that school was concerned. But a friend agreed, and she unfortunately didn't get tenure. She was going off to Boston University and her not getting tenure was separate from me, but she agreed to hood me -- that's the reason why I decided to 01:32:00walk in '94. I could've walked in '95, but she wouldn't be there and so I wanted to get hoodede by her because, you know, how you can feel the laser beams of hate? Glenn Carroll -- they were sitting there behind me and I could feel not comfortable at all. I ended up going and then filing sometime in the late fall of '95 or no, '94, and that's why the degree wasn't awarded until 1995.

FARRELL: What were you hoping to do at this point professionally? What options did you feel like were open to you?

TAKAHASHI: Well interestingly enough, I had started in the fall of 01:33:00'96, starting to send out letters saying I've done my dissertation, here's what I can teach, in San Jose State, Holy Names College, everywhere, USF, part time. I was like groveling, "Do you know if you have a part-time position? I'll be happy to do anything." It happened serendipitously that USF was looking for a junior assistant, tenure track faculty member who could teach international management. I don't know how that happened. I just sent it in, and the dean Denis Neilson at the time, associate dean, he said, "Oh, you know what? We're going to put your application in with the pool for this tenure track position. I hope it's okay." I said, "Yeah, sure." They called 01:34:00me, I got an interview, I did a presentation of my dissertation, and lo and behold, I got hired at the end of December. Everything came together in December of 1996, it was so bizarre, it was really bizarre.

I was going to start teaching in [fall] '97 and at the same time, somebody told me somebody needed a faculty part time to teacher international management at San Jose State, so I taught two sections of international, which was perfect because I did have to do all the prep work for the fall anyway. It worked out. I found out about that in December of 1996, too. The settlement happened, I got this part-time job for the spring of '97, and then I would start teaching in a tenure track position in the fall of '97. All of 01:35:00that happened in December of '96.

FARRELL: Serendipitous.

TAKAHASHI: Alignment.

FARRELL: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

TAKAHASHI: Just unbelievable.

FARRELL: Yeah. What was it like for you to move into another academic atmosphere? I know that's what you were on the job market for, but what was it like for you to start working at UC or USF?

TAKAHASHI: Well, to this day, I find it very difficult to form academic relationships. I mean I was perfectly friendly, all the nice things that junior assistant faculty members are supposed to do, I did, worked hard, joined committees, taught my classes, formed relationships with students, and just kept my nose to the grindstone. But was I going to become buddies with any faculty 01:36:00member? No. And research was hard, the dissertation materials. I mean, Chalmers Johnson had set me up with a publisher who had expressed interest in doing a book based on my dissertation. He thought it was interesting. I could not, I was like physically ill thinking about doing that, so that went by the wayside. [Because of the trouble I had with Lincoln, my original dissertation chair, Chalmers agreed to be my new chair. He had moved to UC San Diego and was in the Political Science department, but since he was still part of UC's academic senate, the powers that be allowed it. He and his wife Sheila were big supporters throughout the ordeal, as well.]

FARRELL: Did you enjoy working with students?

TAKAHASHI: Yes. I enjoyed working with students, so I became a really good advisor, and that's what led to me being associate dean of undergraduate programs because I really cared about my undergraduate students.

FARRELL: Maybe not with your colleagues but you formed strong relationships with your students?

TAKAHASHI: Yes. Yeah, I focused on classroom 01:37:00 experience.

FARRELL: Yeah, yeah, which is arguably why people go into teaching, for the students so.

TAKAHASHI: Yes. USF valued that, they really did. I mean we have small class sizes and the whole thing, so it made that process a lot easier.

FARRELL: Yeah, and then in 2003, you started teaching in Japan and your family moved there with you. Can you tell me a little bit about what that was like, your husband and Sami are going with you?

TAKAHASHI: My mom and and our cat [came too].

FARRELL: Okay, so they came with you too?

TAKAHASHI: Yeah, the kit and caboodle, the whole nine yards, yes. A friend, an acquaintance of mine, taught at Kwansei Gakuin University. It's located between Kobe and Osaka, it's a bedroom community. He had said, "You know we are in the habit of 01:38:00inviting foreign faculty to teach, and this year, it's my turn or my department's turn. If you're interested in teaching at the business school, you can submit an application, and I'll forward it on." So I did in 2002, and lo and behold, they said, "Oh yeah, come on over, we'd love to you have you teach for us for a year, we would provide housing for you." And it was at an age -- Sami was nine at the time and nine and ten is a crucial age for language acquisition. I grew up speaking Japanese, my first language was Japanese, so I can speak Japanese without an accent. She still has a slight accent, but her Japanese is pretty darn good, and it's because the imprinting on those neural circuits happened before that crucial age when things kind of get 01:39:00stuck. That's a big reason why I decided I wanted to go then versus [later]. I found out about tenure, like two or three days before we left, that I had gotten tenure. I was taking my leave then so I took a leave of balance for a year to do this and then came back to USF.

FARRELL: That's also great timing there.

TAKAHASHI: Yes, also great timing there.

FARRELL: Yeah, yeah. Had Alan been to Japan before?

TAKAHASHI: Yes, he had been. He was very interested in Japan. He was working with Lawrence Livermore Labs. He worked out a deal where he would be working, I think maybe a three-quarter time or some amount of time, but he was telecommuting. He was telecommuting and it was again serendipitous that 2003, in the spring of 2003 is when Yahoo! Broadband came to 01:40:00Japan. We had great internet connection, he could make calls to the States, he could make phone calls, it was only a nickel a minute, so he conducted business. Time difference was a bit of a drag but he would come back to the US for meetings every two and a half, three months and lived downstairs [in our Oakland house]. Because we rented out the main part of the house, but downstairs, there was a little room that he had access to, and he would stay down there. He'd come back for like a week or ten days at a time, and he would get work done.

FARRELL: Were you living in the East Bay at this point?

TAKAHASHI: Mm-hmm. We were living in Oakland.

FARRELL: In Oakland, okay. Yeah. What did that mean to you to be able to go with your mom with your husband, with your daughter, with your cat, over to Japan and also give Sami that 01:41:00 experience?

TAKAHASHI: Sami didn't appreciate the experience because she's ten years old. All her friends were in Oakland. [She was not interested in being] uprooted, and she went to a regular, public Japanese elementary school. She's immersed in Japanese and she doesn't really know what's going on. She would have been in fourth grade here, but they put her in a third-grade class, she's the tallest kid in the class. She didn't like it at the time, but she appreciates it now. The best part was for my mom and I -- it was that she could hang out with her buddies, and they did trips together, they had fun. They would take me along to little pubs, and the pubs didn't like it because they had -- Japanese izakayas have really good food, so they don't like little old ladies who weren't going to drink. They would have a little, teeny glass of beer, so I was their 01:42:00designated drinker, so they would take me. Sami and Alan would be at home, and they would go out, and this happened maybe a couple of times, and they would take me. They said, "She's going to do the drinking, okay?" They'd say, "You can stay here for two hours, oh we're not going to eat that much food." They had really good pub food and so it would be three eighty-year-olds and me. It was fun, it was really fun, I mean they were really nice, and we had good times.

FARRELL: The pub food was izakaya?

TAKAHASHI: Mm-hmm, izakaya.

FARRELL: Okay, so you're just ordering as you go?

TAKAHASHI: Yes. They're dependent on people drinking because their margins is with the beer.

FARRELL: Yeah, in most places, the profits center is the alcohol.

TAKAHASHI: It's the alcohol, so they didn't like little, old ladies because they knew weren't going to drink. They said we had a time limit. I said, "Okay, I'll drink."

FARRELL: So they liked 01:43:00 you?

TAKAHASHI: Yes.

FARRELL: And is Sami fluent now? I think you might have just mentioned that.

TAKAHASHI: Her Japanese is pretty good. I mean she lived there three years total, one year when she was ten years old and then after college. She did the JET Program for two years.

FARRELL: What's the JET Program?

TAKAHASHI: It's Japan Exchange and Teaching Program.

FARRELL: Okay, so she was teaching English in Japan?

TAKAHASHI: She's teaching English in Japan for the ministry of education. It's a JET thing, they provide housing, and they do all that.

FARRELL: Okay. When you came back to the States, you continued working at USF and became the associate dean of undergraduate studies in 2015. What was it like for you to become the associate dean?

TAKAHASHI: Well, I wasn't sure. I just knew that people had asked 01:44:00me, several people had asked me to apply. The outgoing guy, nobody liked, so it was easy for me to step in. I instituted a few things that needed to happen and all throughout my faculty time, I had served on committees across campus, so I knew people, and I had made it a point not to make any enemies. It made getting stuff done easier.

FARRELL: You went on administrative sabbatical from academic year 2021 to 2022 and you are officially retiring in a few months at the end of May 2022. Congratulations.

TAKAHASHI: Thank you.

FARRELL: How does it feel to be retiring? Why did you decide to retire 01:45:00 now?

TAKAHASHI: Originally, I was supposed to stop at December of 2021 but we were going through reaccreditation. We went through reaccreditation in the spring of 2021 and so I stayed on. I was co-chairing the strategic plan and I wanted to see it through. My dean was like, "Stay, stay as long as you want," so I stayed another semester and then the gal that I wanted to have take over for me wanted to start in the fall of [2021, so that worked out]. But to be honest, the commute was killing me, and I hate to say this, but COVID helped me a lot in that even though the work was grueling. Oh my god, the number of meetings was just endless at the beginning of COVID, of how are we going to take care of our students and how are we going to make sure our faculty take care of our students and teach our students. [But I didn't have to commute!] That 01:46:00was grueling and because I had done it a full six years, I thought this is enough. I never eat lunch out, I saved all my nickels and dimes, my parents left me money, so I'm just done.

FARRELL: Yeah. Well, congratulations, it's exciting.

TAKAHASHI: Thank you.

FARRELL: I want to talk a little bit about the things that you wanted to raise Sami with -- the rituals, the history, the connection to her heritage, to her history, there. When you were raising her -- and this is broad, this doesn't have to be specifically related to being Japanese American -- it can, but I just want to leave it open. But were 01:47:00there any values, rituals, traditions that you wanted to pass on to her to make sure she had a knowledge of?

TAKAHASHI: Well, what's interesting is she acquired a lot of that on her own living in Japan. She likes cooking Japanese food, which, I keep telling her every time she cooks something, I said, "Oh my Grand Grand" -- my mom was always Grand Grand to her -- "Grand Grand would be so proud of you." Those kind of traditions. One thing that I did with her that my mom did with me, and I think I mentioned this in an email to you, is that when I was little growing up, my mom would always say to me, "I'm so happy you're a girl, it's great, it's a good thing you're a girl." The fact that that was rare in Asians families for Asian women, young girls to be told that. That it was mostly, I found out from other friends [who were told], "I wish you were a boy, too bad you weren't a boy," that kind of stuff, which is so demoralizing for a young 01:48:00woman growing up. But I didn't get that and Sami got that as well from me and my mom, both of us saying, "We're so happy you're a girl." That I hope is a tradition she'll keep and I'm hoping she gets settled down and has a kid.

But mochitsuki is one of those. We have a mochi maker -- I think I told you last time we had the stone and all that. But until I can get some younger people with good, strong backs, maybe this December, that's a tradition that is ingrained in Sami whether we do it with a stone or whether we do it with a machine, I think she expects to do that. New Year's is a tradition. There aren't too many other Japanese things other than food or focused around food because my mom was a very good cook and we're a very food-focused 01:49:00 family.

FARRELL: One thing that you did with her while she was growing up is you returned to Manzanar in the early 2000s. You went with Alan, you went with Sami, and you also had a Japanese exchange student at the time as well.

TAKAHASHI: Yes.

FARRELL: Can you tell me a little bit about what that experience was and going back with your family and with the Japanese exchange student you were hosting?

TAKAHASHI: That was a really interesting experience in that Sami had really not known about this. She was still I think may be about twelve or thirteen at the time, and she's getting involved in that now and beginning to understand what 01:50:00happened. But when we went and took her and Mizuki. [Mizuki was a fifteen-year old girl from Japan on an exchange program through 4H. She stayed with us about two weeks.] I think Sami was around thirteen or fourteen and Mizuki was fifteen. We had come down and I was so surprised, the National Park Service had put this area, a visitor center together, and they had an auditorium and they had a movie showing about what happened. Tears were going down my face watching that thing. And then I saw this big glass plaque with everybody's name on it. I saw my uncles' and aunts' and my grandparents' name on there; that was emotional.

At that time when we went, they said they were planning on building a representation or a replica of the barracks of what it really looked like. That hadn't been built yet, but I understand that's been completed recently and so it'll 01:51:00be interesting to go back again to see it, and maybe we will go with Sami again. But at that point with Mizuki, one of the things I wanted to impress upon her was the fact that the United States did this to Japanese Americans, and that for a long time it remained hidden, it wasn't discussed. But it's finally coming out into the open and there were reparations, redress was made back in the '80s, and this is something that we can look back on as Japanese Americans and say there was at least an acknowledgement of the pain. I still have the letter that Reagan had signed and believe it or not, there are a number of Japanese Americans who are still rah-rah Reagan because of that even though he was really a bad 01:52:00 president.

I explained to her that part of the reason why the rest of the world is kind of hard on Japan is because they have never acknowledged what they did in Asia, throughout Manchuria, South Korea, especially where they talk about cultural annihilation what they did in Korea, right, all these horrible things that they did. I have relatives, I used to talk about this, and they'd say, "Oh well, bad things happened during the war." What? That's why Japan can never regain any kind of face because they just don't fess up and apologize for what they did, they have never done this. They come up with some namby-pamby, oh well, it's too bad you feel this way kind of thing. I thought, 01:53:00no, that's not an apology. The Germans have gotten beyond it. Germans did these atrocious things during the Holocaust, they fessed up, they apologized, they made redress, and they have moved on, and the rest of the world says okay but not Japan.

FARRELL: Yeah, it's interesting with the cultural difference is there as well and especially in the US after redress and even now with the National Park Service -- they're part of the federal government having these sites, acknowledging that. One of the things that you saw when you were there were your father's relatives' names on the plaque. What was that experience like for you to see that memorialized?

TAKAHASHI: It was with mixed feelings. I mean it was good to see my dad's name there, but given my 01:54:00relationship with my uncles and aunts, it was like, oh okay, yeah, bad things happened to them too. But other relatives, other friends of my grandmother, I saw their names as well, and that was kind of nice. But it was mostly the emotional reaction I had seen my grandparents' names, my grandfather's name in particular, and my dad's name.

FARRELL: Did you feel like that experience was cathartic at all?

TAKAHASHI: Yes, it was, it was.

FARRELL: Have you talked to others who have seen those names memorialized in that way?

TAKAHASHI: No. Gordon, my lawyer, his parents were at Poston, I think. I think they might have been in another camp, maybe in Arizona. Rohwer was in 01:55:00Arkansas, but they were in Arizona. They were moved there from Fresno. But no, I don't know if other camps have this type of display.

FARRELL: Hmm, yeah, yeah, it's interesting. I think Topaz is the only one that's privately owned at this point. I'm wondering, if you returned to Manzanar today, if you still feel like your connection to the site today, if you feel like you have one?

TAKAHASHI: I'm not sure. I think it's a visceral thing, that intellectually I would think, there isn't a connection 01:56:00really. But if I went there and saw my dad's and my grandfather's names again, it would probably evoke something that they suffered. They were here in this barren land. It looks nice now because of the National Park Service, but I do remember it was just an obelisk there, and it's really the middle of the desert.

FARRELL: I'm also thinking a little bit about current events and if there's anything recently that's come up that sparks some of the feelings that you felt when you were growing up?

TAKAHASHI: Oh yeah.

FARRELL: Whether that's the pandemic and the increased --

TAKAHASHI: Kung Flu [sic]?

FARRELL: Yeah.

TAKAHASHI: The Kung Flu, yeah, I mean I think Trump opened up the door 01:57:00to all those people hiding under the rocks who harbor anti-Asian sentiments to come out from under the rock. I saw it yesterday that they caught the guy who pushed this Asian woman in Chinatown down. I mean he was just passing by, and she wasn't walking fast enough, he couldn't go around or whatever, and he just pushed her on to the sidewalk. Yeah, stuff like that. It impacts me because when I retired, Alan and I had thought about getting a little camper trailer and pulling it along and camping at different places, hosted camps. But I became very apprehensive over the last year because of these things. He said, "Well, campers tend to be kind of wholesome folk." But I said, "It's not that, it's the vulnerability of being out there that makes me very apprehensive." Those 01:58:00plans are on hold at the moment because I don't need that to happen.

Recently in Santa Monica of all places, and this has happened before Trump was even president, friends and I, we were down there walking back to our hotel from the beach, and this deranged Vietnam vet started calling me names, just horrific Asian names that were based on Vietnam, and he was totally deranged. There were four of us, and they all just surrounded me and just kept walking, but it was like, oh my god, what are you talking about? But it still happens in Santa Monica, liberal bastion of Southern California.

FARRELL: And not so much beneath the surface anymore.

TAKAHASHI: And not so much beneath the surface. That is 01:59:00 worrisome.

FARRELL: Yeah. Yeah, I'm also wondering if you've had conversation with Sami about this and what her feelings are?

TAKAHASHI: We have, and I think I wrote somewhere in an email to you that I'm somewhat relieved that she presents as white. That at Middlebury when she started getting into student organizations that were Asian focused, they said, "Why are you here?" "Well, I'm half Japanese." She didn't look half Japanese to them, so on one hand, I'm relieved. I hate to say it, but I am relieved that she presents as white. On the other hand, she, I think, feels that she would like to look more Asian because then she would be more legitimate in Asian circles, but she is fully immersed in Asian culture 02:00:00and so I'm not worried about that. I know she knows I'm concerned about what's happening -- especially towards Asians, the AAPI, what's going on with the physical violence. She knows I'm concerned about it and I think she is somewhat concerned or she might be in denial that this would happen to me, but we haven't directly talked about that.

FARRELL: Have you seen her become more active in protesting or activism?

TAKAHASHI: Oh yeah. She is very much. Tsuru for Solidarity is one organization that she's involved in.

FARRELL: Okay, so she's involved in Tsuru for Solidarity?

TAKAHASHI: Yeah, and I was too, I went and I was protesting. One year, we went you to Yuba City, the detention center up there to protest, so she's gotten me 02:01:00involved to some extent.

FARRELL: Yeah, and what's that like for you to go up and participate in Tsuru for Solidarity, go to Yuba City with her, to have an experience with her?

TAKAHASHI: It kind of unites us, right, it's a bonding exercise, and I believe in what they're doing as well so that helps. She's trying to pull me into directions of becoming a little bit more active. I'm still recuperating from being in my job, but I have to admit I'm being lazy, but I am a volunteer now at the OUSD, Oakland Unified School District, so I'm going to try to become more active there. Once we can meet at the Buddhist temple in Oakland, I want to become more involved there.

FARRELL: Yeah, I was going to ask if you feel a connection to the Japanese American community today?

TAKAHASHI: No, that would be no. Gordon has gotten me into 02:02:00JACL, and I make monetary contributions to Densho. But because of my work, I have completely let all aspects of the rest of my life kind of go off the rails and now I'm trying to do that, and the fact that I'm very introverted. I do great in dyads, not so much in groups. I'm okay to be left alone, so it's an effort.

FARRELL: Yeah, and it's also a personal thing too.

TAKAHASHI: Yeah.

FARRELL: I do want to ask you some reflective questions unless there's anything we left out that you want to add before we start to wrap up?

TAKAHASHI: I don't think so.

FARRELL: Okay. If anything comes up too, we can always add that into the transcript, but I just wanted to give you the 02:03:00opportunity if there's anything else.

TAKAHASHI: No, thank you.

FARRELL: Okay. Yeah, and so I'm wondering what it means to you to have engaged with your family's history both here and in Japan over the years? What has that meant to you?

TAKAHASHI: Huh. Engaged in the process of these interviews?

FARRELL: Or just your connection, learning the history, going to Japan, meeting your family's or your mother's family, going to Manzanar, learning about Japanese American history. I guess just the whole very broadly like having an engagement where you haven't turned away from your family's history but you've engaged with it.

TAKAHASHI: Oh, I get it, 02:04:00okay. I have met people my age who really don't want to talk about the fact that they grew up on a peach farm for example; it's very interesting. And no, I am the other way. I look at this, all of these experiences as shaping who I am. Growing up, the way I grew up in a barrio in San Fernando in a basically two-room house, that is who I am. I just look at it squarely, and that's made me who I am, and I think it made me super tough. That's what it did, and having a foot in each culture, as you put it, and that is really apt. My body language, everything, it's called code switching, and I didn't know that was the term, but I do that even on the phone. Alan and Sami are used to laugh when I would talk with my 02:05:00aunt or cousin on the phone, and I would just do this [bowing] on the phone and they're like, "They can't see you, Mom." "I know that." But my voice changes, everything. When I'm speaking Japanese my voice changes, body language changes, everything changes, and I think that's a good thing, I'm doing this unconsciously. I appreciate the fact that I have not just one culture but two cultures that I understand pretty well. I also understand the Mexican Latino culture to some respect because I grew up with a lot of Mexican kids and that's broadened my understanding of the human condition. And working hard, working in the fields, physically, physical labor makes 02:06:00me appreciate the physical labor of others and not look down on them. So I've embraced it.

FARRELL: Yeah, and looking back, what are some of the things that you're most proud of? I'm going to intentionally leave that broad too, whether that's personal, whether that's professionally, whether that's related to your family. What are the things that you're most proud of when you look back on your life?

TAKAHASHI: Main thing is that both Alan and I took care of our parents. We're both only children and we made sure that they transitioned, I guess that's the new word for passing on, that they were cared for in the end and they didn't die alone. Well, they did die alone, but up until 02:07:00then, they were cared for. That I'm proud of. I'm proud of fighting this thing [with UC Berkeley]. In retrospect, I probably might not have said that week ago or even two weeks ago, but having gone through it, I'm proud of having seen it to the end. I'm proud of raising a kid that is a little bit too self-critical but is very engaged with the world and wants to make things better. We gave her the option to do whatever -- she has my mom's house if she wants to eventually [move there] -- that we're renting out, she could live there. We said, "You're set, so you do whatever you want, you don't have to feel any pressure from us to do anything." She decided she wanted to be a teacher and she's teaching second grade in a really bad neighborhood, good for you. I'm proud of giving her 02:08:00that, following through with what we said early on to her when she was really little and making sure she felt comfortable in her choices.

FARRELL: That's a gift in and of itself. How would you like your family to be remembered whether the farm, that kind of thing -- when people look back on this, what do you hope they take away from your family story?

TAKAHASHI: That my dad grew really good strawberries and that my mom was really good at selling everything. That they took a great deal of pride in what they did, just tremendous amount of pride [and that they treated their workers with respect. There was integrity to everything they did and they did their best to impart those values to me directly through their actions.]

FARRELL: My last question for you before we wrap up is, what are your hopes for Sami and her future as she moves through 02:09:00 life?

TAKAHASHI: That she won't be so self-critical, that she will gain some confidence in the choices that she's made. I think she's happy with the choices that she made. But mostly, I want to make sure that for her, that she just gained some more confidence that she is doing as much as she can do and that she can't be self-critical, so self-critical. I mean she gets into these little vortexes, and it's like, "Stop, just stop." [Understanding that everyone makes mistakes -- that's just part of growth. But growth happens by reflecting on those mistakes, learning from them so that you don't make the same mistakes again. It's not useful to keep dwelling on your mistakes beyond learning from it.]

FARRELL: That's really beautiful. Is there anything else that you want to add before we 02:10:00wrap up?

TAKAHASHI: No, not really.

FARRELL: Okay, well, thank you so much, I'm going to pause the recording, and we'll talk about next steps.

[End of interview]