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TI: So let's jump forward. You mentioned how you finally made it to California and worked in a shipyard?

DK: Yes.

TI: So talk about that. What kind of things were you doing in the shipyard?

DK: Well, when we first got to California, of course, I got the first job I could get a hold of, and that was in a manufacturing plant putting machinery together. And I went to night welding school to better myself, and started working for Consolidated Steel in East L.A. And they were needing welders pretty bad in the shipyards, so I took a maritime welding test and had to wait about three weeks 'til they got the results. But I went to work for Bethlehem Steel, which was building at time, had destroyers. I worked on four different destroyers.

TI: And so about what year was this? What...

DK: This was 1940 and '41.

TI: Okay. So 1940, '41, you're in shipyard and doing steel welding. Okay, so keep going -- well, one question, why did you choose California?

DK: I guess mostly because of the job situation. They were, of course, we were already making things and supplying England with things, and so there was quite a demand for workers and it was more so in California than there was in Kansas, by far. So that's the main reason.

[Interruption]

TI: So we're in East L.A., you started in Kansas and made your way to, to East L.A. I'm curious, I mean, what did you think of Los Angeles in the early '40s? Because here you're, you're going to, I imagine, a place where, Kansas, where it was more like homogeneous in terms of race, and probably more Caucasian, and then you go to East L.A., which probably had a wider mixture of different races. What, what did you think about East L.A.?

DK: As a general, the working place was not too bad, but as a general, people were, seemed to be to me, too busy to interact as far as friendships and that. It was harder to get acquainted, harder to go to entertainments and different things. But it was, it was different.

TI: So it's kind of funny, it's just like it is today. Sometimes you go to the city like L.A. or San Francisco or even Seattle, people are always so busy.

DK: Right, yeah.

TI: So it hasn't, hasn't changed in sixty, sixty years.

DK: It hasn't changed, no. No.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2005 Densho. All Rights Reserved.