Densho Digital Archive - Kara Kondo Interview (denshovh-kkara-01-0025)

<Begin Segment 25>

AI: Well, now, in 1942, in the spring when, when you were being so-called "evacuated," your father would have been in his sixties already.

KK: Yes.

AI: And your mother in her fifties.

KK: Yes.

AI: And you were about twenty-six or so?

KK: Yes.

AI: And so when you talk about the shifting of responsibility, here your father had been the head of the family and run his farm and so forth. And now, it was coming into a situation where you were really handling most of the affairs for the family?

KK: Yes. It was really baffling to him. Of course, it was unusual circumstances, and it dealt with legal documents and orders that came almost daily and, and activities that it was hard to understand. I think they --

AI: What did end up happening with all the crops that you had put in?

KK: Well, eventually a young couple bought, bought the lease -- so-called lease -- and they moved in after we moved out. But they had made arrangements. I don't know what kind of arrangements they had made with the government, with the agency that was handling that. I gather that to many of them, they were able to get it for free, probably.

GN: Did you have any bank accounts at all, or...?

KK: Oh, the bank accounts we were able to keep.

GN: Uh-huh.

KK: And I look over the list -- I still have them, I didn't bring them -- of those items that we sold. And ten cents, fifteen cents, twenty-five cents, and so, and we threw out so many things. I keep thinking of the headboards, of what would be antiques now, hardwood headboards that we had to take to the dump, and things like that, or give them away. But selling them, everybody knew that you could just really get things cheaply from those who were going to be evacuated.

GN: Did you have any pets?

KK: We, I think we had a dog, and whether, whether the dog was still alive or not, I don't, I think the people who took over our property kept the pets. We had chickens, too, but I don't, they must have taken those, too. It was a time when people raised their own chickens and pets.