<Begin Segment 14>

MA: So you mentioned that your father, basically from the hospital, arranged for you and your sister to continue your education.

GK: Right, right.

MA: But did you have to finish high school first, or how did that work?

GK: (Yes), what we did was we finished high school in Texas.

MA: Okay, so before you attended college, you...

GK: Right. So I was able to, I had one more semester, so I completed that in Abilene, at the high school there, and my sister did also. She was a year younger than me, so we were just sixteen (and) seventeen at the time.

MA: So you were very young, and what were your impressions of Texas? I mean, where were you living...

GK: Well, we went to live with two families, two Caucasian families, of course, and we were called schoolgirls, to work for our room and board. So I lived with a family who had three children, and the father and mother had a pharmacy, so they were gone most of the time, so they needed someone to help with the housework and the cooking and so forth, so that's what I did. I had to work pretty hard, and one thing I remember are the piles of ironing I had to do. Because in those days, there were no knit fabrics or pressed, permanent press, so everything had to be sprinkled and rolled up, and that's how we ironed. So then I got calluses on my right hand, in the palm of my hand, because you have to press down real hard, you know. And during the winter, I would have to get up a little earlier to light all the gas heaters in each room for the family to get up, so they would have a warm room. And I used to study until late at night, maybe from about nine o'clock on, I started my studies, because until then I was doing some housework. But they were good to me, and I enjoyed the children. And that went on for maybe two and a half years, because then, my mother and the youngest sister were able to join us from camp. So then we didn't have to live with the families any more, we had our own apartment, so that made it nicer.

MA: Was your sister also a schoolgirl living with a family?

GK: Right, she lived with a family who had only one little boy, so she didn't have as much work as I did. And on weekends, we got together, at least they gave us Sunday off, so then we could meet other Japanese students. There were some other Japanese students not at Hardin Simmons, but at another college called McMurry College in Abilene. So we were able to meet them and do things together.

MA: How was that time for you? I mean, I guess, emotionally, you were separated from your mother and youngest sister and your father had passed away very recently, and you were seventeen and living in a brand-new place. How were you... I mean, what were you feeling and thinking about during that time?

GK: Right. You know, I guess it's because we were kept so busy that I didn't really think about it too much. And maybe it's a good thing because it could have been kind of tough. But I guess the main thing is we were kept so busy that I didn't really think about it. So we got along all right. Except that there was a camp, Camp Barkeley near Abilene, where soldiers would come into Abilene, to the downtown area, and I remember they used to stare at us, my sister and me, they just stared and stared and stared, which was incredibly rude on their part, you know. But I guess that's a form of discrimination. However, it was not like they didn't see other Japanese Americans because there were other soldiers, Japanese American soldiers at Camp Barkeley, and many of them had families still in the camps. And they had enlisted to show their loyalty to the United States, the country of their birth. So it was not like they didn't see any Japanese Americans, but I guess it was a sort of prejudice, racial prejudice, (that) they stared so much. But then when we were in the university community, they accepted us and we felt very comfortable.

MA: What about the town of Abilene? What was there? What was that like?

GK: Oh, well, they had a nice downtown, but then like I said, I didn't like to go into town because we were stared at so much.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright ©2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.