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JC: Yes, I love the story about your mom, too, and her dream of becoming... tell us that story.

KM: Yes. You know, my mom before she got married, she went to college. She went to Woodbury College in Los Angeles, from San Jose, and she was very creative. She went to school, and it was in design, fashion design. We had lots of books that she had made, of fashion things, patterns and dress styles and things. And from what I understand, several of her friends wanted her to stay down there so that they could start a business in fashion. But her father said, no, she should come and get married. And so she got married when she was twenty-one or twenty-two. And so that was an opportunity where she could have, perhaps, done something with her talents. She came back, got married, and then, of course, the war started. She had the two kids. Now, after the war, she did so many things. I remember she went to Laney and she got a certificate, license, in beauty school or hair design or something like that. She went and learned secretarial things. She went and learned about sewing drapes. She was very, very talented and wanted to try all these things but was never able to, for one reason or another.

JC: So the war, the internment really did affect your family, and especially your parents.

KM: Yes, yes. I really think it did, particularly for my dad. When they came back, they had nothing. So what could he resort to, but it's because he had all these kids in the family.

JC: Thank you, Kiyo, your family's history is really fascinating. But I have a question. You have so much detail in your father's story. So where did all those memories come from?

KM: Well, I have a secret, I have cheat notes. My husband, Will Masuda, is a Buddhist minister, he's retired now. But he went to school to get his doctorate in clinical psych. And for his dissertation, he wrote about the Kibei. And he did all of these interviews of Kibei and my dad was one of them. And so I have the transcripts of that interview, and so I got a lot of this information, particularly about the camp life and about his hopes, the effects of the war. And my dad was very worried, very worried during the war, what was going to happen to his family. Were they going to be annihilated, killed here, you know? Were they going to be saved by the Japanese? So it was a really, really troubling, disturbing time for him that I didn't realize until I read about him. And, of course, other things from what my folks had said.

JC: Well, you're very fortunate to have that, because so many of us, as family members of our own families, wished we could have, just knowing that a time like this could come when you want those memories.

KM: Yes.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2021 Densho. All Rights Reserved.