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Matt Emery: After your family got out of camp, where did you guys go? You were in Topaz, right? Where did the family go after that? Did the family stay together, did your brother move away?

FK: No, we went back to California. My parents did and my brothers did because we had, we had a, we have a nursery. We have a nursery there, and even though they did not maintain it and everything was in shambles, but we had a place. Otherwise we wouldn't have it. And the bank held it for us, so we started all over from the foundations, built up the house and, greenhouses and all, all the pipes and things in the nursery was corroded, and we had to fix that, and the boilerhouse had to be restored again, to be operational and things like that. But the bank was willing to loan us the money, and so we went right back to work, and we finally got that. So we were one of, one of the lucky ones. Now, there were other Japanese families that leased land for growing strawberries, acres and acres of strawberries. 'Cause they used, because after they were interned, there wasn't any strawberry in California because all the strawberries were grown by Japanese. And, but see, it didn't take buildings and so forth to grow strawberries, they grew it right outside, and they just had a small house and so forth to live in, which wasn't very much of a house. So the owner, see, that was leased. All the lands were leased, so when a owner got it back, they just plowed everything up and did his own, gave it to some farmers or started building homes on top, and so they lost their land completely. And they're the ones that had to find other kinds of work, or go into farming further away from the city, or wherever land they can get. But quite a few went into other fields like gardening and nursery business like bedding plants and so forth. And lot of 'em did well in making bedding plants, so that's what happened.

[Interruption]

TK: The question is, when you were arrested and the newspaper called you a spy, do you remember what went through your mind at that time?

FK: Well, I thought it was a big joke because I didn't do anything wrong. And here I've been here all my life, and they know, they know that I've lived here all my life. They knew it because even before Pearl Harbor, they told my friends that was in, that was in military uniform to lay off of me, and they knew that we went to school together. Being arrested was... I just didn't feel that I did anything wrong.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 1996 Densho. All Rights Reserved.