06:46
So we ended up in this very small town in the south-east corner of Iowa. That’s where I went to school all my years of … in the United States Grade School, so from 5-18. And basically I saw my life as being really terrible. My Brother was born almost 5 years after I was, so I was almost 5. I had been an only child, very pampered and very dotted on for 5 years and then, all of a sudden, the son comes. In Japanese families, sons are very important. And he was also a premature baby. So he got lots of attention. And I felt totally not cared for at all.  And then a couple of years later my sister came, so very close together. Actually, they’re.. I think they are an year and a half apart.
07:54
So, it was kind of .. one thing over another thing. And then in school – because this was right after the war – people were not happy with having a Japanese child in school. And the teachers were extremely weird. Mostly, the prejudice and they kind of hateful experience I had in school were from teachers. They would… the kids would tease me about being Japanese and I would, of course, fight for my self. And … I was the one that got her mouth washed out with soap. Or, y’know, got to stand in a corner. Or.. and the other kids never had any kind of retribution from the teachers.
08:49
It was only when I was 64, if you can imagine, and found out that I had a metastasis from my breast cancer.And so that my girl friends from this time, I’ve met them when I was 4 when I moved to Keosauqua, three of them came and we talked about my relationship with my mother which was very fraught and my family life back in those days and who they saw I was during that time. And it was a revelation, really, I mean, this was really true reconciliation. 0934 OK, I’m gonna take a little brake here..0937
09:42

00:00
So one of my friends who is very, very small in stature, she is about 4-10 or 4-11 even now and probably weighs under 100 pounds. So you can imagine as a little girl of like 7 years old she was very small. And she said, «you know, I saw these things happening. And I would go home and talk to my mother and say, y’know, what can I do because the teachers are just so mean to her.“ And her mother said, «just come home and talk to me about it and I will go to do something but you can’t do anything because if you do something then you end up creating a schism in the class where it’s like kids for and kids against”. So she was a pretty wise woman.
00:57
When we spoke about this it was very emotional for me because at the time up to the time of being 64 I always thought I was just this lone person and I felt really alone. I couldn’t talk to my parents about this at all because the rule of the family was «to mind your family duty and never lower your fathers head». So whatever happened in school I had to take. I never went to my parents. I don’t know if they actually ever knew, tell you the truth.
01:38
And, when I was in high school I happened to belong to a class that for this little town was the largest class in its history. Till up to then in 1966 our graduating class was one hundred …(laughs)… And, since then there’s never been a class  that large since then. Out of that class there were like 20 people who became … in the United states we take this very special test for college entrance and there were about 20 people who scored so high in the test that they got offered scholarships from … everywhere, I mean it was an amazing class. So I was a pretty lazy student. I didn’t do that well, I mean I did well enough for my parents not to get too upset. But I was not a straight A student. So I had this reputation of being lazy. And I couldn’t get over it, I mean, now I have a kind of inkling about what my rebellion was, at the time y’know about studying and so on. But I couldn’t get it then.
03:06

03:06
When I was 16, the summer when I was going to turn 16, I was in a car accident with a friend of mine who.. whose birthday was earlier in the year, so she was already 16 and she had her licence. And we drove in a place where we weren’t supposed to drive because it was all gravel roads. (Cough) In this accident she got killed instantly, and I was in the middle seat and I was .. I had a concussion and a number of other small injuries. And I was in the hospital for I think a month. And then her brother, who was on the outside of the front seat, had a broken leg. He was quite young at the time. He was like maybe nine or something.
04:01
So, I had this relationship with Mary, my friend, who had died, all through High School and all through College. And she would come to me in the da… in the night when I was worried about tests. And she would say, «Phyllis if you had read the book you wouldn’t be in this state .. (laughs)
04:24  then when I got into Reiki and kind of esoteric situations and stuff I realized how amazing those conversations were with Mary during that time of my life. Pretty interesting.
04:42 But that accident changed my life because my grandmother became much more protective of me. My parents became very protective of me. And even though I had been somewhat protected before now it was really a lot. So, I wasn’t allowed to go out on dates and I was wearing these shoes that I had, I still have some congenital malformation of my hips or something. So I had to wear these special built-up shoes. They were really ugly, I just hated them.
05:24
And, I mean, I just felt like a very put upon child, I mean, y’know, I was not pretty, I certainly didn’t match the standards of beauty that all the other girls of my class did, blond, you know, straight legs, so on and so on. It’s like.. it was very strange. And then I went through College. My College career was pretty fraught, for the first two years. And then I had to take a year off. And I came back and I found out that if I actually went to class and read the books, that I could actually get very good grades, it was pretty amazing. So I had to thank Mary for that.
06:12

06:12
My father was a doctor. So, whenever we got sick., which was not often, I have to say, we… he came, he would look at us, kind of poke at us with his finger and say, “you’ll live, go to school!” I mean, I never missed a day of school. I was late a lot in school but I never missed a day in school. So when I graduated at the age of 18, from this school, the principle had to give me this certificate that said that I had never missed a day school in twelve years. He said, «but I don’t know why I’m giving you this certificate because you were late probably half of those days. (laughs) And I said, «well, that’s really lucky for me.» (laughs)
7:12
I felt not very well cared for by my father but my family was definitely raised in a way, where, you know, you got sick, you went to the doctor, he gave you a pill or a shot and you got better. I mean, that was our idea of healing. Which wasn’t really healing. It’s kind of curing. So that’s how I went out into the world with this idea that I was not, I was not worthy to be a friend of anybody, I saw myself as very ugly, as having very little to offer people. And that I had friends was kind of a miracle. I didn’t really understand why I had friends. And that they just happened to me and that when they happened my parents would take care of.. would be there and they would take care of whatever was going on. And because of this hip thing that I had, which I can’t really explain, because nobody ever explained it to me, 0837 when I was 24 or so, no 25 I foun.. I was taken up to the mountains by some friends of mine.*
08:51