<Begin Segment 10>

MA: Okay, so I wanted to ask you, you mentioned your family's property was taken by eminent domain in the late '50s, around 1959. If you could talk about that, and the effects it had on your family and the property.

IK: Yeah, the eminent domain really affected my parents financially. 'Cause here it had taken them really a long time to so-called recover. And I don't know that you can say they had recovered at that point, even. But it was somewhere around '58, I think, when the talk first started, or we were first notified. And I know that by '59, it had been completed. But the State came in, notified my parents that we had to move out. The State was gonna take our property for the 405 freeway, which is right now the current Crenshaw offramp. So it's 182nd and Crenshaw, but it's the Crenshaw offramp on the 405. My father's English was pretty good in the sense that he could communicate with his customers about plants. But when you talk about people coming from the state with their, not only their power but their vocabulary and their legal this and legal that, my father really didn't have a chance. My father also had the famous Kagoshima temper, and I know that he got really angry that they were just arbitrarily in his mind -- and maybe it was arbitrary -- taking, coming and saying, "You gotta move out." Apparently, again, I was not standing there with the conversation, but I know from what my father said, that he could have taken some of the property, or the possessions off the property. We had, in '53, when I was in the eighth grade, we had built a new house. So Mrs. Wing's house was gone, no more slugs in the morning. And we had also built a store. And so those two buildings were not factored in. Also, I do remember that at least three acres of the five, if not the entire five, but at least three acres of the five, the property had dropped down -- Crenshaw was up here, and then it would just kind of drop. I'm thinking it might be like a three-foot drop. It was not a valley, but it was a substantial drop, and he filled it. Three to five cubic acres, not flat, so he had the depth. He filled that with dirt. They didn't count that. My memory of what they were compensated for was how the property looked in '47, not how it looked in '59. They didn't even count the eleven years of business and customer confidence that they had built up, nothing. And they just took the property. I remember also that, the day that they came to auction off what we weren't taking. My father had cooled down and decided he wanted to buy the house back, but he couldn't. I guess the bidding just got too high. So he was really, he just came in and I think he probably felt like, "Oh, I really messed up," and couldn't do anything.

They got so little that they were lucky to even find the place on Artesia. The property that is east of the present Marukai, not immediately east but the one over, there were 3 acres there. And so my parents bought that property. But for two, three years, they built a nice store, actually. By that time, my brother was out of the Air Force Reserves, he had graduated from Cal Poly Pomona. So I know he had a lot to do with the design of the store, very kind of modernistic looking. But that was all that they could afford. And so... have you been on Artesia? It was busy then, it's busier now. But Artesia was... I'm not sure. I think now it's, like, six lanes, right, three on three. It was at least four, but I'm pretty sure it may have even been almost been clearly six.

So there was that cement median, concrete median, but they had to run across Artesia every day, back and forth, to the apartment. And so it took them quite a while. But they couldn't rebuild, because to build a house from scratch is too expensive. And I guess there must have been, maybe in those days, I'm sure if there were places where they had empty houses parked. Because they did pull in a house.

And then somewhere... just trying to think of the years now. Where was I? I'm not sure if it was before I got married, but it would have been the late '60s. My father died in '78, so I'm kind of gauging when that happened. So I'm thinking it was in the '60s. There was talk of joining the 405 to the 110. So the San Diego to the Harbor, using Artesia. And we're gonna get kicked out again. My father was so angry. By that time, how old was he? He was old. 'Cause when he died in '78, he was like eighty-one or two. And so I remember him saying, "What am I gonna do? I'm in my seventies," and he was really mad. He says, "This American government," he says, "they kicked me out, put me in the camp, then they kicked me out of my place in Torrance. Now they're gonna kick me out again."

MA: How do you think race factored into the city, or I guess, the State of California, how they dealt with your father at the time?

IK: You know, I was so different in terms of my, even my awareness. All I know is that... of course, I was angry, but it wasn't, I'm different now than back then. And I'm thinking, "I think things would have been really, really different if I had been more aware." But also, too, though, I don't think I knew anybody. Now I know a lot of people. I know where to go to get help, and that this person will know somebody else who has some clout. And I think that, a lot of that works against immigrant and low, middle income, or low income. You don't have the resources. And so it was kind of like all you could do is be angry, and that was it. And it wasn't like, "What can we do?" It's kind of like, how do you fight city hall? That phrase, it is so true. Because they come with the power of the law, the law that that they made. They come with language that my father couldn't navigate, and they weren't gonna give him anything. So he was arguing against just a blank wall. And I imagine that it's very easy, and maybe they take the easier way. Because if there's a way to get things done faster, easier, cheaper.

MA: And so did they ever end up connecting those two freeways together?

IK: No, they didn't.

MA: Okay. So your parents could stay on Artesia.

IK: Yeah, right. 'Cause right now, that's where the 91 freeway ends.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.