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MA: And something that you wrote about in your written memoirs was something very frightening, the fire that broke out in your house. Can you talk about that (morning)?

GK: Well, it was early Sunday morning, and we had some houseguests, so they were sleeping in the front part of the house where my parents usually slept. So the rest of us, five of us, were in the back bedroom. And early that morning, I could hear, something woke me up and I could hear crackling. So I thought, "Oh, I wonder what's the matter," so then I woke up and opened the bathroom door, and all these huge tongues of orange flames came at me. So I quickly closed the door and shouted, "Fire." And then my parents woke up. They were sound asleep and they didn't even hear any of the commotion. And what had happened was our hot water heater had blown up quietly, it didn't make any noise, and then that set the place on fire. Oh, so then we had to hurry and, you know, get up, and then we had to go out the front door, we couldn't go out the back door. So we knocked on the bedroom door where our guests were staying, and we all went out and crossed the street and watched our house burn down. That was very frightening.

MA: And how old were you at this point?

GK: I'm trying to think. So it was after we went to Japan, maybe I was early teenage. That was awful.

MA: And your house was completely destroyed.

GK: Destroyed, yes. So it was a Sunday morning, and I'm sure my father had his responsibilities in mind, so I don't know if he preached a sermon that day or not, I don't remember that. But it was very scary.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright ©2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.