Densho Digital Archive - Fred Korematsu - Kathryn Korematsu Interview (denshovh-kfred

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TK: This is an interview of Kathryn Korematsu, on May 14, 1996, and we're in Seattle, Washington. Ms. Korematsu, could you talk about your life, where you were born, and what kind of family did you have? How many siblings, what your parents were like, where you were born? That whole area.

KK: Well, I was born in Greenville, South Carolina, which is in, what they called the Piedmont section of the south, very near the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was a city, and industrial city, mostly cotton mills surrounding it. And I grew up in the Greenville... well, I was, lived in Greenville -- my father was originally from North Carolina, my mother was a South Carolinian, and she was from a large family. She was the third of the, of nine children.

I actually started school in the first grade, we did not have kindergarten in South Carolina at that time, and I started school at the same school my mother had gone to, and I always thought that was sort of special. We moved to North Carolina when I was, I think, in the second, yeah, second grade, lived in Charlotte, North Carolina, and then subsequently, in the small community outside of Charlotte. And I lived there until I was in the eighth grade. And then we spent one year on the North Carolina coast in a small community, fishing community, and then we went back to South Carolina and I graduated from high school there. I had a sister who was, I was eight years older than she, and she died when she was five. Then later, a brother was born when I was a junior in high school, and he's an architect now and lives in New York City.

My parents, my father was a mechanic and managed to work during the Depression, and so the Depression didn't hit us as it did a lot of families, but I know that my mother helped lots of people. She had a very soft heart, and she helped a lot of people.

TK: What was your father's name and your mother's maiden name, and then your brothers' and sisters' names?

KK: My brother is David, my sister is Virginia, the one who died, that was a big blow to our family.

TK: And your mother and father's names?

KK: My mother was Annie Bell, and my father's name was Fritz.

TK: Did you enjoy your life when you were younger? Was it a happy life?

KK: Yes, I think so. I loved going to school, and I always cried if I was sick and had to stay home, 'cause I, it wasn't that -- I know our children, when they were growing up, if they had to stay home from school, they missed the kids. I missed the learning, so I would cry, "I'm missing this, I'm missing that," 'cause I loved school. I had good teachers, I had teachers that were interested in me, and I really enjoyed school a lot, and that, of course, was my big life, that and church. And I was a Girl Scout for a while as a young girl. My mother was a large family, aunts and uncles, and there was a lot of visiting back and forth. My mother was a good cook and a good seamstress, so she made my clothes. And I would say I had a good childhood, considering what some other children had, especially during the Depression years.

I graduated from high school in 1938 and went, then went to Winthrop College, which is in Rock Hill, South Carolina. It's actually, the title was Winthrop College, the South Carolina College for Women. I understand now they take men, but at that time... it started out as a teacher's school, a normal school, and became more than that. And I majored in biology and chemistry. And from there I went to Detroit, Michigan, to get a master's degree in medical technology at Wayne University.