<Begin Segment 6>

MA: So I wanted to go back a little bit and ask you about when your family returned from Manzanar. You mentioned that you first moved into the Truman-Boyd housing project in Long Beach, I think?

IK: Long Beach.

MA: Do you have any memories of that facility? Because I know that there was a lot of Japanese Americans who stayed there after the war.

IK: Right, yeah. All I know is that there... I don't know how large the space was, I'm assuming it was a one-bedroom. I don't (even) know if we knew the people, but there were two families in that space. The only visual that I remember is the stairway. It went up this way and went up like that. I remember kids just kind of sitting there huddled, playing or whatever. That's the only thing I remember. But we were only there about a couple of months, three max. And then my father found the rental on Meyler Street behind what was then Harbor General, and now it's Harbor UCLA medical center.

MA: And that was the place that was run by the Kibei?

IK: The Kibei, yeah. And as I said, I knew all those things, but I never questioned it. Because I was not in that questioning frame of mind at the time I could have gotten the answers. It all came later, like, god, it's even almost just like a few months ago. I said, "Gee, I don't know really the date we left camp," and it wasn't there. So there are things that happened, but the questions didn't come up. And as I said, my mother told me that he was Kibei. And the property... well, there weren't very many tract homes in those days, it was just like a piece of land and a house. And that's kind of what I remember seeing, is that the house was in the middle of a block of land, kind of like a field, not a big field, and there was an outhouse in the back. But we were there, let me see, we must have been there about a year, year and a half. Because then we moved to north Torrance in '47, because that's the year I started first grade.

MA: And you mentioned that your relationship with this person who was running the, who owned the home or operated the facility was not very good?

IK: I never saw him, but I do know that he was harassing my parents. I don't know if it was verbally, but I definitely know that he was putting sugar in -- because we used to have our own gas tank or something and he would put sugar in there. And doing things to make life miserable. I mean, that was even, not even the, I mentioned that it was really a one-room house, literally, because it had no bathroom. The kitchen was on one side, and the other half of the room, my parents had draped a blanket, and that became our bedroom. So it was a one-room thing, and outhouse in the back. But -- and I don't know, naturally, how much it cost or anything, but the conditions, if the landlord, if the Kibei had been a good guy, we probably would have stayed a longer time, until maybe my father's work situation improved. But we got out as soon as my father found a place right there on Crenshaw and 182nd.

MA: In Torrance.

IK: Torrance, right.

MA: And was this the home you stayed in for a while?

IK: Until the eminent domain for the 405 freeway. So we were there from '45 to '59 -- not '45, '47 to '59. Five acres, and a barn with a windmill. The house was built by the landlady's father, she was a white lady, her name was Mrs. Wing, which might sound Chinese, but she was white. Very, very nice to us, gave us our first ever snowball cookies for Christmas. And so eventually she sold the property. She was already a widow at that point, she had a daughter. The house, in contrast to the other one, it had a living room, a bedroom, a bathroom, and there was a little room to the back. Really teeny-tiny. It's almost like today's walk-in closet, but my father slept in that room. And in the larger bedroom, my mother, my sister, and then my brother and I in the other bed. But to us, it was like, wow, there's a bathroom, so that was really wonderful. I don't know why there was no kitchen, unless one of the other rooms was a kitchen, but it didn't seem like it as far as plumbing. But the landlady's father just attached it, and literally attached it. Not remodeled like now, just attached, and that was the kitchen. It was kind of like on the ground, so there was like wood across the floor, but otherwise, it was not attached. So during the night, and in the morning when I'd wake up, because even the sink, it had a wood frame. And you know, wood gets all soggy and rotten. And so every morning, there'd be slugs all over the sink that we'd have to clear out. And we had no refrigerator the first few years. I don't know even know the first year we got one. Our first refrigerator was a Philco, but for a few years, we had one of those double section wooden fruit boxes. And my parents turned it up this way, had a curtain over here, and then they put the block of ice... I'm thinking they put it on the bottom. I have no idea, because really you should put it on top. But my memory is that the block of ice was on the bottom, and then behind that curtain would be the milk and whatever. I have no idea if those things went bad, 'cause it was not, except at night, it wasn't cold. So that was our refrigerator for the longest time. Of course, we had no TV until I was in the eighth grade, about 1953. Because really, nobody had TVs until maybe a couple years, maybe '51, my uncle had a little thirteen-inch one.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.