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JF: Kiyo, your camp story, your family's camp story is so interesting, thank you. Can you now tell us about where your family went after camp, after they were released?

KM: Okay. Well, from Gila, Arizona, after the war we were not able to come back to Alameda, and so we went to Ohio. Apparently the Quakers had hostels there, and they welcomed the Japanese. And I remember we had to take a train. It was very long, and when we got off the train in Cincinnati, my mother said that all of these people, they were just staring at us because they'd never seen Japanese before. So anyway, we were in a hostel for a while in Cincinnati and then we moved to Dayton, Ohio, to a dairy farm. And I remember that dairy farm, not a lot, but we lived in... I called it a shack. There was an outhouse, and from my window, from my bed, I'd turn around and there was a knothole in the wall. And I could look out and I could see the pasture and a cow. And my father worked, he'd never worked in such a place before, but I remember going into the barn, and he said, "Kiyoko, get out, get out." I had on red clothes, I think, and it was thought that that was really dangerous for bulls, working with the livestock there. And then I remember, after the rains, lots of dandelions, and my mom would pick that, and that's what we had for okazu, fresh dandelion (leaves to eat). And I remember I went to nursery school or something at that time. And then going to the five and dime with my mom, I found some really pretty buttons, so I brought them home and I showed my mom these beautiful buttons I (got). I must have been about five. And I couldn't keep them, she took me back to the store and I had to give them back to the clerk and apologize. So that was Dayton, Ohio. We only stayed maybe a year, year and a half, because my dad felt it was too cold there and he wanted his kids to be around Japanese and the community here.

So we came back to Alameda, and when we came back, of course, there was no place to live. And so this Buddhist temple was open and we stayed here for about five months or so, and lived in the hall with a number of other families. And I remember all the ladies had to cook together in the kitchen. There were the Sugiyama girls, Kiyomi and Satoko. And then there was the Marubayashis, and Mamie and all of her sisters. They bought a house on Pacific Avenue, just a few blocks from the temple. And I didn't know it at that time, but I learned that the reason so many Japanese live on this side of Lincoln is because Lincoln was the red line, and people of Japanese heritage could not buy on the other side, so that was interesting. So from there, my dad continued to do gardening, and I remember that there were no Japanese barbers who had come back as yet. And my dad was not, I guess he was uncomfortable going to a non-Japanese barber. So I distinctly remember, in the kitchen, Papa would be sitting on this chair, my mother would give him his haircut, and they were really whitewalls. Uuntil the barber came back, but he lived on Buena Vista, where he had his haircuts.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.