International House Berkeley

84 because the war had ended, but partly because you anticipated that conflicts were going to be over. I guess there was still a kind of Russian – U.S. competition going on at that time, which was worrisome.... The North Korean invasion, that occurred shortly after the war, in the early fifties – 1950, or something like that, that was also worrisome.... But, in the end, because at International House we got to know people from all over the world and got to know them as human beings – as very much like us, and we were like them – it was just a very positive time. Since you could be friends with anybody in any part of the world, there didn't seem to be any reason to have conflict. It just seemed kind of dumb, to be mad at somebody. Yes, that international sense of hope impacted my own personal sense of hope. Also, I don't think people were so worried about getting a job; as I recall, there was not a great unemployment problem. When I was graduating from college, everybody got a job. I don't think it was a concern at that time: "How am I going to get a job?" At least, I don't think so. No, I don't think the disparity in income in the International House was a big dividing line. My father died when I was just ten years old, and our income stopped at that point. This was in the middle of the Depression; my mother suddenly had to raise two boys with no income, and that was not an easy time. So I was used to working. I got a job as a newspaper boy at age eleven. And when I got out of high school, I knew I was going to go into the Service because the war was just about to begin at that time . But I got a job right out of high school, at age sixteen in the shipyards, until I got drafted into the Service. When I got out of the Service, it was a question of getting the G.I. Bill, which was a tremendous asset, for me, certainly, and for lots of other people, including my wife; she was on the G.I. Bill as well. So we got through college, even though we had no money. But I wasn't aware of any great divide between those with money and those without. In International House, I don't think there were a lot of students from wealthy families; there might have been some, but it was never any sort of divide – it just wasn't a concern. Nor do I think there was a divide between those foreign students who had money and those students who came as refugees and didn't have anything. Joan and I haven't been in touch with I-House that much. You know, Joan and I have lived in the East, we lived in Thailand a couple of years, we lived in Denver at one time. It's only since I've been retired that we're really back in the Bay Area. But we should feel attached, because certainly I-House was a defining moment in my life and important to us. Taken from an interview of September 15, 2010, by Jeanine Castello-Lin and Tonya Staros

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