Densho Digital Archive - Iku Kiriyama Interview

<Begin Segment 1>

MA: So today is Tuesday, July 7, 2009, and Densho is here in Torrance, California. My name is Megan Asaka, and I will be interviewing Iku Kiriyama. Dana Hoshide is the cameraperson for today. So thank you so much for doing this interview

IK: Oh, thank you for inviting me.

MA: I wanted to start by just asking you some basic questions. When were you born?

IK: November 12, 1939.

MA: And where were you born?

IK: Los Angeles, probably near USC.

MA: And what was the name given to you at birth?

IK: Ikuko.

MA: Ikuko. And what's your maiden name?

IK: Kato.

MA: And I wanted to talk a little bit about your parents. You mentioned before that your mother was a Nisei. Can you talk about her background and where she grew up?

IK: She was born in Santa Cruz, she was born in 1912. She was, but before she was age ten, the family moved to Arizona, and they had twenty acres to farm. Her father, though, contracted pneumonia and died when she was -- excuse me, wait a minute. They must have moved earlier then, because her father died when she was ten. So I don't really know exactly when they moved to Arizona, but I imagine at least five years there before he passed away. And then my mother was the oldest of... they had big families then. So it was my mother, (brother), sister... she had three siblings plus three half-sisters, 'cause her mother remarried later. But the burden of farming really fell on my mother. They started having really hard times. She blamed her stepfather, actually, because she said that he really didn't work hard, and so the twenty acres went to waste. And because of that, the family was always starving. In those days, of course, and even in my time, we walked to school, they walked to school. And because they had no breakfast, often she and her brothers and sister would faint at school. And I remember once -- not once, it was the common story -- that if she ever received anything, she would divide it in five or four equal parts, and everybody got a little piece. So she had a hard life. She graduated from high school there, never was what you'd call an educated person, though. She was a very simple person, simple life, and that's because all she knew was staying at home and working. And so when she came out to California, and her marriage to my father was omiai, you know, the arranged marriage. And so she went from farming to, my father was... when he came from Japan, he was farming, but then after they got married he did some gardening and nursery. And she said that she never wanted to work on a farm because the life was so tough. But then she moved from one pan to another. Not exactly the same work, but the same conditions. And so she never really had a life other than staying on whatever property, so it'd be Arizona, twenty acres, California, a few acres, then Manzanar, locked there, come back, same thing again. She never drove, so my father did all the shopping. She never went to anything, 'cause he always would go to the meetings or whatever. So she had a hard life. Typical, I think, in that way. It was not unique, unfortunately.

MA: Right. And your father, then, was an Issei, so he was born in Japan?

IK: Right, he was from Kagoshima. I thought that he had come just once and stayed, but when my husband and I were in D.C., we went to the archives there, and that's when I discovered that he had come when he was nineteen, went back for whatever reason, and then returned when he was twenty. And then never went back until, gosh, it was probably about '70, '71. It was kind of like Rip Van Winkle going back after all those years, just to visit.

MA: And did he come right to, did he settle in southern California?

IK: Primarily. I don't know so much about settling, but moving around like all Issei did. Most of his work was in the valleys, farming, doing crop sharing. He also had a, like a fruit stand, worked in a coffee shop. And so did little odds and ends things. After the war, since we had nothing, he did some gardening to slowly build up stock by getting cuttings and slips from his customers' yards, and then we were able to start the business not too long after we got back. I think we were back here... you know, I tried finding the information, I even asked a friend at JANM. It was really funny, I got the, all the camp documents from the archives, paid for every page, duplicates and empties and all. And it dawned on me just a few months ago, when I was looking for something... oh, I know, we were going to UCLA to speak to Lane Hirabayashi's seminar class. So I thought, "When did we actually leave?" It was one of those things where I lived it, and there are certain dates that I know, but there was really no reason to get really the exact date. So I went to my documents, I couldn't find a release date at all. Going in, it was there, my husband's records for going from Manzanar to Tule, everything is there, but nothing about a release date. So I really don't know. I assume that we left Manzanar at the end of '45. I know we were there at least that long because I have documents of October '45 when my mother was questioned. Again, like I said, she was never really very sharp in terms of comprehension of words. And so when Question 27 and 28 came up, she answered "yes-no." So they called her in -- my father, even though he's Japan-educated and all that, he understood and he answered "yes-yes." And because my mother answered "yes-no," she was called in. And I have the transcript of the interview, it's very interesting. You can see how she's just completely frightened, intimidated, and the questioners kept pounding at her. They repeated it several times in different ways to have her say, "Yes, I'm loyal, I will do anything for -- yes, I'll be in there." And my mother was sick all the time in Manzanar. That's why I mentioned to you when we were talking on the phone that she never wanted to go back on these pilgrimages. It was just a place that she hated. But during that interview, "Oh, I'll be a nurse, I'll do anything." And the explanation she gave -- and I really don't know if that was the real, I think she was just confused. She told the interrogator that she answered "no" because, for some reason, and I didn't follow her rationale there, but she thought that if she answered "yes," because she's a citizen and my father wasn't, because Issei couldn't be, that he would be sent back to Japan and she would have to stay here. So maybe that was it, but as I said, the documents were the first time I had even seen anything along that line.

MA: Okay, so I was gonna ask, this was the first time you even know about that?

IK: Right, right. Yeah, because we didn't talk about the political, legal ramifications of the camp. It was just the life that we had, and there were no questions. Certainly not from me when I'm little, and growing up, I was very conscious of being Japanese. And it wasn't until I started teaching really, in '62, that I became really, really conscious of how everybody else at the high school where I taught, they all thought I came from Japan.

<Begin Segment 2>

MA: So when you were, though, little, and you said you were always conscious of being Japanese, what are you, can you talk about that a little bit more?

IK: Well, conscious in the sense that I knew I was Japanese. But it wasn't in terms of that I was Japanese-Japanese, but I knew I was Japanese and the other people were white. I grew up in Torrance, it was all white. The largest ethnic group as far as visually -- again, I'm not sure about actual numbers -- were the Mexicans. And at that time, Latinos were Mexican, you know, they weren't from the other countries yet. Just as everybody in our area were Japanese. I don't recall any Chinese or Koreans. And so if anyone, if we talked about others, not in a racial sense, but identification, all the Caucasians, all the hakujin, would be American. But we would be Japanese. And in that way, I was conscious of not being American, but actually, I was conscious of not being white.

MA: Right, because "American" equaled "white," right?

IK: Right, exactly. And so then that hit me, so twenty-some years later, I go to San Fernando Valley to teach. And because I'm the Japanese language teacher, for some reason, they all thought I was from Japan. If they thought about it, that'd be kind of hard at that time, because I wouldn't have a credential and I wouldn't have the coursework and all that, and I spoke English well. [Laughs]

<Begin Segment 3>

MA: So I wanted to go back a little bit. And I know you were born in '39, so you were just a baby when the war broke out and that was all happening. But can you give me a context of, or an outline of what happened to your family after Pearl Harbor?

IK: After Pearl Harbor... well, when Pearl Harbor was attacked, we were in Inglewood, that I know. See, prior to that, my parents were -- I don't know if it was leased property or if they worked for somebody, but we do have photos of me in one of the buggies and stuff. And that's (why) I know that I was born near USC. I think some of the photos identify it as Thirty-seventh Street or something, which is right around USC. So as a baby, that's where we were. And at some point, then my father was able to get leased property by Inglewood, by the airport in Inglewood. And then after Pearl Harbor, it was a couple of months, and then we moved to West L.A. where my uncle's apartment was, and that's why we were sent to Manzanar. And I did mention earlier, during the telephone interview, that the army had come in and taken over our property, they completely took everything down from the greenhouses and the soldiers bunked there. They had... I'm not sure if barbed wire on the ground, but barbed wire on top of camouflage nets with machine guns. And all because of the path to LAX.

MA: I see, because of the proximity to the airport.

IK: Yes, right. And so I guess the fact that they would have machine guns would be for any, maybe, Japanese airplanes coming in or whatever. Because they certainly wouldn't be firing on people in the city of Inglewood. So I think that's the reason for that. So then we were taken to Manzanar in April, April of '42. And until, like I said, about the end of '45.

<Begin Segment 4>

MA: And how many children were in your family? How many siblings did you have?

IK: My brother and I, yeah, my brother and I were born by USC, we were both delivered b the same midwife. My sister was born in Manzanar, and that was the reason my mother couldn't go to Amache when her mother was dying of stomach cancer. 'Cause she was giving birth to my (sister), and I guess it was a very difficult delivery, 'cause they had to do a c-section, which, in those days, it was very difficult. And because of that, she couldn't have any more kids. Whereas I think now, people do have kids, even with c-sections. So there must be some other medical technology that they do. And so my sister really doesn't remember anything. I remember very little, 'cause I was two and a half and five. But she doesn't remember anything.

MA: You mentioned on the phone that you had some sort of flashes of memory, though?

IK: Uh-huh. And I know that they're mine -- because sometimes it's very hard. You're not sure if they're your memories or it's because somebody told you and you just kind of absorbed it. But I know that certain memories are strictly mine because they are very sense oriented. So the sense of touch I do remember. I can feel the, I must have been outside during some, when a sandstorm kicked up, because I can remember the feeling on my legs, very, very prickly. I remember during a blackout -- I guess my mother must have always given me a bath in one of those little tubs, 'cause to go to the communal one, it would be more difficult for her to bathe me and her and all this. And so I remember one blackout, I was sitting in a tub, and one of my aunt's friends, who was probably in a nearby barrack, came over during the blackout. And I remember -- and she wore glasses, and she still does -- and I remember seeing, because it was dark, I remember seeing the reflection, probably one candle, but it reflects double. And so my mother had lit a candle during the blackout. And so I remember her face smiling at me, and I see the two candles, one in each lens. So I remember that. And I remember... the only food that I remember, I always thought that we only had one plate, but my husband told me that was only at the beginning, that later on we had separate plates for things. But I just remember going, plop, plop, plop, as you walk along. And I just remembered that when the hot rice was one of the last, then the red jell-o went right on top. And that's what I remember. My husband, being ten when they went in, he remembered a whole lot of stuff about food. That's probably about it. Whenever people ask me about memories, the blackout and the sandstorm and the jell-o.

Oh, and I do remember one thing, too. I did go to preschool. It was kind of like pre-k kindergarten. 'Cause my mother took me to see the teacher, and I was, I don't know if I was two and a half or three, 'cause maybe I was three by this time. But the story she tells me is that she took me to see the kindergarten teacher because she wanted me to be in school but I was too young, and the teacher says, "Well, she looks intelligent," so she let me in, kind of a thing. And I remember there was one boy, I used to know his name years and years and years ago. And I remember thinking that he was my boyfriend, 'cause we would always walk to wherever the schoolroom was. And I do remember one time -- and I know this is, again, my own, because I remember seeing... I was in the toilet. And I guess because we were really little, three or four, he was probably four, you don't think anything of it. I'm sitting on the toilet doing my thing, and he's standing and just waiting for me, and I guess we were talking, 'cause he's standing there watching me. [Laughs] So I know no one told me that story. So it's that kind of stuff. Nothing what people would want to hear about, conditions and all that. I don't really know what the conditions were.

<Begin Segment 5>

MA: It seems like later on you've done quite a bit of research about, more about the sort of political historical context about your family's imprisonment.

IK: Right. I always had that interest. When I was teaching in the valley, and this was one of the Pearl Harbor anniversary dates. And at the time, I don't know if it was my Japanese class. No, no, no, it was B-11 Honors. At that time we had B and A. And so it was B-11 Honors English, and it was first period. The student body president, who was a former student of mine a couple years before, came on the PA system, you know, they make their announcements. But he came on and said, "December 7, 1941," and then went into this Pearl Harbor thing. And I had some Sansei students in the class, very few, because Monroe was still highly, majority white still. And so anyway, when that was done -- I have to digress after I tell you this story -- it really upset me. And so even though that was the English period, I spent the whole time talking about the injustice, the loss of liberty, no due process, I went through the whole thing. And I did it really because these were what I call "smart kids." They were the kids who really could understand, and also would even have interest in things like that. And I remember that one of the boys sitting in front said, "Oh, we thought it was for your protection," and that's what they're always taught, right? But my point was, "You know, look around you. A lot of your classmates have the face." And it's really insensitive to do announcements that could affect their self-confidence, their sense of guilt or whatever. I don't know if they did, 'cause they're Sansei kids. Because I said, "Okay, if we're going to do Remember Pearl Harbor, then how about Remember the Alamo and all the other remembers?" I said, "It's really not very sensitive at all." So anyway, the kids told the boy who was student body president, he came to apologize to me. And I said, "I'm not mad at you," I said, but I do question really, maybe the administration really didn't look to see what the announcements would be, I have no idea. I didn't really follow up on that.

Now, going back to the cause of that, kind of that anger, when I was in the sixth grade -- this was in Torrance -- remember, I went to school in Torrance all the way through high school graduation. I was in the sixth grade, there was one other JA girl, her name was June, and our desks were kind of, I think, just facing each other. I don't know if it was a circle or facing each other, but she was right there and I'm right here. And Mrs. Dean, the sixth grade teacher, said to the class on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, that she wanted everybody to stand up and "share what the Japs had done to their families." And June and I were just like this, and her face was really pink. But we're grinning, I guess because we couldn't, who were we gonna get angry at? And that was a typical reaction, I think. It's not like now, where my daughter would have stood up and said, "What do you think you're doing?" or whatever. It wasn't that way. We were all behaving in that same way. I don't recall anybody ever speaking out in anger in my classes. There weren't too many of us anyway. So that's what stayed with me from my sixth grade until that happened when I was teaching, and then that announcement came on, and I was really upset.

MA: When you talked to the class about the camps and what had happened, did you sense that they kind of got it?

IK: Uh-huh, they did. I didn't detect any skepticism or like, "You guys, what did you do?" There wasn't that at all.

MA: Was this the first time a lot of them had heard about the internment?

IK: Well, this was the eleventh grade, and at that point, there wasn't that mandate yet in the state. I don't really know if there was even a paragraph. There may have been. I think there may have been mention, but yet, even now, of course, that time is glossed over because it's like, we don't have time, and also, the teachers are really not that qualified even if they go to these teacher trainings. They're really not qualified after a couple of sessions. And they -- so I always think that those kids that were with me that day when we spent the whole hour, I did most of the talking, naturally, because they really couldn't contribute much more than comments like, "Oh, we thought it was for your protection." So I'm hoping, okay, now maybe they know now that there was something else that was wrong.

I know that a couple of years around that time, I had gone to Japan on a teacher's, it was a Fulbright summer program in '64. And at that time, when we went to Hiroshima, I picked up the brochure that they have with all the black and white photos and everything. And I think it was maybe '65, '66, somewhere around there, one of the history teachers came to ask for -- I guess he knew, or the kids maybe told him. So he came and asked if he could borrow that when he goes over that period. And I said, "Oh, sure, of course." I was really happy that someone would want to share the other side of the picture. Well, this same teacher, one day, one of my Sansei students came into the classroom and she was upset. She was a junior at that time -- that makes sense, eleventh grade, so that would have been probably that time. She says, "Ms. Kato, Mr. Thomas said that the Japanese were cannibals, and that they ate the -- " I guess they must have been like the Norwegian sailors or something. And I said, "What?" And so anyway, I thought, "I'm not gonna go accuse somebody of distortions." So I called my USC Japanese language and history teacher and I said, "Tell me, did this ever happen in history?" And he says, "No, of course not." I said, "Okay, I just want to make sure that I'm not speaking out of turn." So the next day, we both had the same conference period. So I was walking towards the social studies building and I saw him. I said, "Mr. Thomas," and then I went and I proceeded to tell him what Arlene had told me. And I said, "Where did you get that information?" And he says, "It's in a book, I read it." And I said, "Well, you know, I'd like to see the book, because that's totally, totally not historically true." And then he said, "Well," he says, "they put them in cages," they would capture the sailors or whatever. He said, "They would put them in cages, and then no one ever saw them again, so what do you think?" or something like that. And I thought, "Oh my god, that's a big leap." I mean, maybe they killed them, which still is not good, but then to say they ate them, you know. So I thought, "Oh, my goodness." And he says, ("I'll find,") and then we're walking along, we get to kind of where the office is. Opens the door and walks in, and slams the door shut. And I'm standing in the hallway going, "Oh, my god." He never did find the book, naturally. But what amazed me is several years later... by this point, I was in the adult division because my kids were born, so maybe five or six years had passed. And he wrote me a letter and asked if he could borrow the book. [Laughs] I said, "Oh, my god, did he get it or not?" you know, that Hiroshima book, he wanted to borrow that Hiroshima book. He's telling me that he sent a dollar to Japan and never got a book. And I went, "Oh, well, god, I don't think it paid for postage. [Laughs] So I just ignored him. But, see, those things were constantly going on. So thank goodness there have been in-services and stuff. And yet I remember when we were doing teacher trainings through the historical society in the nineties, teachers said, "Oh, my god, I never heard about this."

MA: So although there's been progress, there's still a lot to be done, right?

IK: Oh, but you figure it's just a drop in the bucket. Because all these young teachers that come along... [interruption]. But if they didn't take history, because you don't have to always, they just became a teacher without knowing, really, any multicultural stuff, not just our history, but everybody else's.

<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.

<Begin Segment 7>

MA: You mentioned that Torrance was pretty much an all white, it was very white.

IK: Very, very white.

MA: And it's interesting because Gardena is, was, a lot of Japanese Americans living there at the time.

IK: Right.

MA: Do you know why there was such a discrepancy in terms of demographics?

IK: I really -- a friend of mine who was on the state assembly and was city councilman for, like, sixteen years in Torrance, I know he always talks about how the city of Torrance welcomed the Japanese back. And I've never, I should ask him about it. I've never questioned about that, because my understanding, it always was -- and I'm not sure where I got the understand, maybe it was just talk among my father and his friends -- my understanding was that Torrance didn't really want us there. They didn't really want anybody who was not white. And my understanding is that Gardena was more open, and that's why there were so many. It's kind of like one moves in and they keep moving in. And I mentioned, too, that I know for a fact that at Torrance High there was only one black kid. And they were... let's see, it was in the early '50s when the tracks came. 'Cause when we first moved there, from 182nd all the way to 190th, there was nothing, just us. And all the acres from us to 190th, somebody had planted lima beans every year. Because after they harvested the crop, then we would go through the property and pick up all the leftover lima beans that were still on the ground, and then my mother would pack it and send it to Japan.

So somewhere, like I said, in the early '50s, these little box houses, the tract homes, started popping up. And the one that was right next to us on the street was a biracial couple, black mother and a white father. And the kid was really white. He did not have the black look. He had the curly hair, but he was very white. And it wasn't until later that... 'cause we didn't talk. 'Cause our property, the driveway and everything, so it was not a neighborly thing that was there where you would be talking to people living next to you. But I do remember hearing that they were harassed so much that they moved out. And that was one family, and the kid looked white. And for the longest time, I don't remember seeing any black kids or adults. But I do remember, my kids, where we are, it's southeast Torrance, so that's where Torrance High is, the first high school. And I think it was after, might have been after my daughter graduated, which would have been somewhere around '89. But one of my friends who's from Hawaii, she's JA, she told me that this mother, she's white, and she's a real talker. Funny lady, you're always laughing with her. But she was dead serious when -- and then my friend was in that conversation at that time. She said, "Guess what Sue said? She said, 'Oh, my god. There are enough black kids at Torrance High now to have a club.'" She was just appalled that there were enough of them to have a club. And a lot of families we know moved out. Not a whole lot, because still, Torrance was still an attractive city to move to.

MA: It started out rural, it sounds like.

IK: Yeah, very. We were really country, more than Gardena.

MA: Really? Okay. And then over the years, obviously, now, it's commercial and more industrial, urban.

IK: Oh, very. Right.

MA: When did that change start happening?

IK: It has to be the '50s, early '50s. In fact, it probably started with the time the tracks started coming in. So, again, I'm guesstimating the time, it has to be around 1953, that point. Because in 1957, Torrance was named... they had that all-American city for population, what was it, 100,000? Gardena never has had that, even today. I think they're still at around 50, 60,000. And so, but of course they're constrained by boundaries. They don't really have room, whereas Torrance started off with this huge, much bigger area. Gardena was always kind of already contained in a certain area. I think that must be the reason. That's why they don't really have the industry that Torrance has, all the commercial. There is no major shopping center in Gardena.

MA: But when you were growing up, was Gardena where you went for, like, the Japanese language school?

IK: Exactly. Even now, even now. Torrance has... because I think they're at 150,000, somewhere around there, and they have Toyota, Honda, and the Del Amo shopping center and all those. And all the major restaurants, big hotels. But it's always been, as far as the JA community, non-JA. Not a church, and usually a church is always part of a community, right? There are a lot of Korean churches now, but they're a much, much later group. They move in and they're all over Gardena, the Korean churches. And in Torrance, too. You drive down any of the major streets, what used to be a business is now a Korean church. What used to be, I think it was like a Mormon temple or something right there on Cabrillo is now a Korean church. So as a community, they've really come in. But to this day, there still really isn't... there are a couple churches. Boundary-wise, they're considered, like, Torrance. But they're so much into Gardena that I really don't think of it as Gardena-Gardena, I mean, Torrance-Torrance. Faith United Methodist Church is by Nijiya Market on Van Ness and 182nd, but the next street over, you're already into Gardena. So no church, no temple, no community center, nothing. Our historical society is about the only thing that can claim Torrance. But that's because we lived in Torrance, I live in Torrance, our PO Box is there. The meetings are at my house, that kind of a thing. So just by residence. So I always tell everybody, "Yeah, we're Torrance-based." But, in terms of, I would say... it goes up and down, it changes. But in terms of where we get more support for our activities, it's outside of Torrance. They come from all over, but it's not the Torrance group.

<Begin Segment 8>

MA: I wanted to talk a little bit about your father's work that he went into after the war. You said he went into gardening and the nursery business. Can you talk a little bit about that and how he built that, and your role? I'm sure your siblings worked.

IK: Right. Well, you know, my father had a high school education in Japan, which is very high for his time. He was born in 1897, and he was very highly educated, much more educated than my mother. Much more interested, because he read the Hearst papers and the LA Times. And yet, because he didn't have any schooling here, plus he couldn't be a citizen until '52, was it, I think. And I never heard him expressing a desire to get his citizenship either. I think he knew that this was his home forever because we're here, but I never heard him say, "I think I'd like to go to school and get my citizenship." And because of that, what could he do? He knew the land, and so that's why he did gardening, and then went into the nursery business.

MA: And that started after the war when he moved to Torrance?

IK: Uh-huh. Well, no, actually, he was, in terms of owning the land, it was postwar. Before (that), like the property by LAX was leased. And then the other jobs he had were following the crops in the Imperial Valley primarily, going to Coachella Valley, working in a fruit stand, in a coffee shop. So it wasn't really his business until after the war, when it was possible.

MA: And what did you, what types of things would you do helping out with his business?

IK: Whatever they said. The one that I hated the most was to wash the pots. Because the pots that had moss growing on it, I would have to sit there, and it was such a tiring job, especially during the summer. The sun's beating on me, I hated that job. And this is when I'm still, like, first, second grade. So until I was, I guess, junior high age, I would do that. And I would help plant. I know that every summer, my brother and I would be awakened when it was still dark. And we'd go into the field, and there'd be this round, kind of like a turntable, and we'd put the gallon cans with the dirt on the turntable, and it would go to my father and he'd plant, my mother doing the same thing. And so we would plant while it was still cool, without any heat yet. So that I remember. About the time that, I guess... my parents planted pansies first, I should put that, and the chrysanthemums came later. It was primarily wholesale at first. And I have two stories coming up. But I remember that I had to stand on the street in front of the house on Crenshaw and sell baskets of pansies. And one day, this old, gray-haired hakujin man came to buy a basket of pansies. And I don't know how I was giving change, frankly, but he says, "Wait a minute, you're not doing it right." So he stood there, and he showed me how to count back. He would show me how to count back the change, he said, "Okay, now you do it again." And so I did it over and over and over for him, and so he taught me how to count change. And then it was, I guess, end of junior high -- although Torrance didn't have junior high -- so I'm putting it in age context. Torrance was K to 8, 9 to 12. So somewhere around when I would have been an eighth grader, eighth and ninth, that's when I started selling. And I would have to learn what everything was.

And so I was working in the nursery that way until I graduated from high school and I went to USC and my parents had me dorm. And I know that it was financially very difficult. I really don't know how they... 'cause they didn't take out any loans. I don't know if my father even took a tanomoshii, you know, from his kenjinkai group. Of course, 'cause I'm not privy to the conversation, right? You don't see, so it doesn't exist. But anyway, my mother insisted that I dorm at SC, which was really great for me. Because she said if I stayed home and they got busy outside, they would call me, and they wanted me to study. They didn't want my studies interrupted. And it was like, oh my god. My first day on campus in the dorm, I got to get up late. [Laughs] Because from the time I was little to high school, it was either getting up early for school or getting up early to go outside, even earlier, 'cause it was still dark. And I thought it was so wonderful when I could sleep in after seven o'clock or whatever, you know. So even to this day, I'm a night owl. I can be up 'til two, three o'clock, four o'clock in the morning sometimes. Especially my husband's gone, too, because I never was up that late when he was around, but I am now. But I get up around nine-thirty. That's why when you asked me what time, I said, "Well, I'd rather come later." [Laughs]

<Begin Segment 9>

MA: And so what was, what year did you graduate from high school and then go into USC?

IK: June 1957 from high school, and then I entered SC in September of '57. Graduated with my BA in '61, and then my fifth year was the year that I took my education courses for the credential, and it was also the year that I student taught. In those days, we had to student teach... if we're secondary, we student taught in our major and our minor.

MA: And what were your major and minor?

IK: My major was history, my minor was English, but other than my first year at Foshay junior high, where I did a combination of social studies and English, when I got to Monroe, it was Japanese and English, so I never taught history after that. But I student taught in English in a B-9 high achieving class at Foshay, and then I student taught a regular level U.S. history at Manual Arts. And my experience at Foshay was so nice, 'cause my master teacher was just great, that I returned there for my first assignment when the principal asked me to become a regular teacher. And then it was midway through that year -- and it was a tough year, too -- since that Foshay was already, I'm not sure exactly, but it was probably eighty percent black.

MA: And what neighborhood is this located in?

IK: It's right by SC. That's why it was one of the training schools. So SC, Dorsey, Manual, and I imagine the elementary schools for the elementary teachers. It was a tough year, but I did, I enjoyed it. And then it was early in the spring when Dr. Theodore Chen from USC called and said that Carnegie and USC want to start a pilot program in Japanese language, and that obviously the L.A.U.S.D. would be it, 'cause they were the biggest district where it's possible. And so he asked me to interview for one of the three spots, and the three schools were Dorsey, Monroe in the valley, and Venice, Venice High School.

MA: Going back a little bit to your time at USC, how many other, I guess, what was the Japanese American student community there, and of those, how many women were at school with you?

IK: You know, there seemed to be quite a few, just because visually you would see a whole bunch. But I have a feeling it must be because we congregated. Because I know that the white kids would call the area by Doheny library the "Oriental tea garden," because, I guess, that's where everybody was. So it's hard to say in terms of the total population, I have no idea what the enrollment was at USC. I'm sure it's somewhere if you Google it. And then probably a minority of that. Because, at that time, of course, it's really cheap now. When I first entered SC, tuition was twenty-two dollars a unit. Now, that won't even buy you a book. But, and it was, because it was a tuition school, a private school, in contrast to UCLA which was really just starting at that point. UCLA was not the big university at that point. It didn't have any professional schools, no dental school, no pharmacy school. That's why no school of education for master's and PhDs. That's why everybody was at SC, and that's why you have the old boy's network for the longest time being SC. Not enough people realize that. But anyway, I remember that somewhere around, I guess, my junior year at SC. And a lot of the JA guys, and not just JA, all the Asians that were there, there were Chinese, Korean, I'm not sure if there were others of other Asian extractions, but probably very few. But I do remember that I heard a couple of the guys talking, and apparently there was a quota. Not an official quota, but there was a quota for dental school, like two a year.

MA: On Asian student admission?

IK: Right, yeah. I have no idea, but I know there was, somehow or other, I guess maybe they said, "Oh, last year, two," "Year before that, two." Somehow, these rumors are based on some kind of information. And I didn't hear that for -- although I didn't date too many guys from med school, so I have no idea if med school had that quota. A huge number of guys -- and they were mostly guys -- the dental school had no women students that I know of, except in dental hygiene. Pharmacy school, or in the pre-pharm, there were a number of women, lot of women, and guys, too, of course. So that school was big. There were a lot of Asian kids all over. They had their own fraternity and sorority. Well, the dental students did, too. School of Commerce was on the smaller side, but I think it was all this status thing. This was kind of somewhere that I got this information, and so it's not my, anything that I made up, not my theory. But it was the kind of thing where people would say, "If you can't get into med. school, then you go to dental school. If you can't get into dental school, then you go to pharmacy school. If you can't get into pharmacy school, then you go to commerce." Almost like engineering. If you can't get into electrical, then you go to civil, and then if you can't do that, then you go to mechanical. So it was kind of this status thing. I'm not sure exactly how it really rolled out in that way.

MA: So you were a history major, though, primarily?

IK: Uh-huh.

MA: And what were your classes like? Was it focused on U.S. history, and if so, was there any talk about...

IK: U.S. and world history, that's about it.

MA: Was there anything about Asian American anything at that time?

IK: No, no. We had no Asian American. Like I said, the only department we had was called East Asian Studies, and that was headed by Dr. Theodore Chen, who was very well-known in the Asian history circles. But when you studied East Asian history, you were across the ocean. There was no Asian American. That happened way later. When I say "way," maybe, what, ten years?

MA: And with that, I imagine a lot of, sort of, these heritage social organizations, Asian American groups that you find in college now. I mean, was that there when...

IK: Oh, like NSU and stuff?

MA: Yeah.

IK: Oh, no, of course not. Because I think the NSU kind of... and there was another one that was kind of like ACSA, but it's not ACSA, I know that. But anyway, those organizations were kind of a natural outgrowth of (the growth of) Asian American studies. And UCLA was the first one as far as I know. I think they're the ones who started NSU, and now they're NSU and whatever else the offshoots that they called. No, so there was no Asian American Studies, there was no class that taught about the American side of World War II in terms of involving (U.S.). Nothing. There were, as far as in the liberal arts department, I don't recall... well, let's say with my teachers, because I certainly wouldn't be taking everybody. But of my professors, they were all white, mostly white male, except when I took Japanese language, and... I don't know if I even took Asian history. I can't remember. I know I took... everybody had to be in what they called Man and Civ, that was the freshman... that's when we had maybe two hundred in Bovard Auditorium. So everybody, that was one of the requirements, and that was basically world history from the caveman times. And I took South American history, U.S. history, of course. They were all white, though.

<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.

<Begin Segment 11>

MA: You know, I was wondering if we could talk a little bit about... when we previously talked, you mentioned the way that we remember the internment collectively, the consciousness of the Issei. And how you see with the Sanseis and the Yonseis, that consciousness is just much different in the way that we talk about the internment and are much more, sort of, vocal about it. Can you talk about that, sort of, change? I don't know, you said that no one really talked about the internment, right? When you were growing up, your parents didn't talk about it, no one talked about it. And I think in the, sort of, '80s, '90s, after the Asian American movement became much more of a conscious thing, a public thing. And can you talk a little bit about that change?

IK: Yeah. I think, if I understand, you're asking the contrast between the generation of the Issei, Nisei, to now with really... the Sanseis kind of sandwiched in between, and then the Yonsei, Gosei. Really, it's partly cultural. The young people now, they're growing up, and all they've ever known is America. All they've ever known is being able to do what they want, say what they want, and they really don't have the same attitude of gaman, of putting things aside for another time, or maybe putting things aside forever, because it's going to hurt somebody else. And so they were quick to -- I mean, I don't think anymore, but initially, there was that, kind of that beginning period of, almost like with the Jews. How could you walk into the... and people, when you're not there, you don't know the fear. And it's almost like hope. "Oh, if I cooperate, everything will be okay." And so for people to maybe even comment about the lack of backbone is really not right and it's not fair, and it's really not too mature. Because they're saying, "Times are good for me now. I wouldn't go to camp." And also with the Issei -- and that's why we have what we call "Issei values." They're so ingrained. Are there Yonsei values? I don't think so. I don't know if anybody would even come to an agreement, saying that, "These are the Yonsei values," or the Sansei values. But with the Issei, it's really clear. And with that Japanese American family book that we're doing, when the Nisei write, very clear. They can name a dozen examples. And so when it came to Pearl Harbor and the eventual removal to the concentration camps, fear was the main thing. That drove everything. And that fear brought in the so-called, the gaman, shikata ga nai. "Put up with it, what can we do? And let's just do the best we can." And it was a way of survival. And that was the whole thing. Even postwar, it was to survive. Because if you didn't work, you didn't have any food or clothing, nothing.

And so the difference between the Issei, Nisei, Sansei, Yonsei, whatever comes later if we keep naming them by numbers, it's really a difference in time, times are different, it's a difference in cultural traits, it's a difference in how they grew up. And so I think all the Issei, if they were still here, and the Nisei, I think what they would just be happy about is for the younger generations to really understand what happened, and that there was no choice. Of course, there were a few, you know, like Min Yasui and Korematsu and Hirabayashi. You had the handful here and there, maybe others that didn't even hit the law books. But again, too, they were Nisei. They had the language capabilities for one, which the Issei didn't. So I think it's hard to talk about differences other than to say that times were different.

MA: How do you think the Asian American movement, the impact of that, I guess, on you personally? And also just on how, as a community, we remember the internment? I just feel like the Asian American movement had such an impact on education, on classes that someone like me, I could take, that were available to me in college.

IK: Definitely. I think the movement was very instrumental and important in people hearing others talk about it, even if they didn't talk about it themselves. Even if maybe they were even embarrassed, as some, I'm sure, were. Because remember when the subject of reparations/redress came out, huge number of people said, "Oh, my god. How can you do that? How shameful." And yet they took it when it finally happened, I'm sure. [Laughs] And so I think the Asian American movement definitely was real key to my kids feeling like they are Americans and they have every right to the rights of everybody else, and so does everybody else have the same rights. And, in fact, my daughter started the Asian American Studies (minor) at Cal State Fullerton. So she worked with Dr. Art Hansen. It was in her senior year, so she didn't get to reap the fruit of her labor. I didn't know until just a few... talk about not talking, I didn't know that she was so in awe of UCLA that... I guess because UCLA had this look, this huge campus. And she told me that she used to go there all the time to absorb the atmosphere, to sit around and all this. And so then one day Glenn Omatsu, who's the history professor, lecturer at CSUN, told her, "What are you doing here? You could go back to Fullerton and do something." And so that's what she did. And so now they have the Asian American Studies Department.

[Interruption]

So I think, to close the question of the importance of the Asian American movement, is that it was politically very important and necessary to even get to the point of redress. It was important in giving some credibility and validity to courses, because it's at the university level now, which makes, I think, the secondary schools have to kind of address things if they're in those areas. And it's really important for the psyche, I think, of the young people, to feel that, "Hey, this is good, good stuff." And it gives them... so they're not ashamed. They don't have to sit there with a pink face like we did in the sixth grade.

<Begin Segment 12>

MA: Where do you think your... you mentioned before, when your parents were going through the eminent domain issue with the State, and you said you weren't as conscious as you are now, how did that transition happen for you?

IK: Probably when I started to teach. Because now things were facing me, like the Pearl Harbor announcement, and that teacher said Japanese were cannibals. But also a big factor was my husband. He was a history major. In fact, he was a Japanese history minor in his day. I didn't even know that they even had such a thing as even a minor in that program. He grew up, he went to camp from the time he was ten. His father had to go back to Japan because the oldest son that my husband never met, there was like twenty years' difference between the oldest brother and my husband. So he never saw him, 'cause he died before the war ended, I think. And so his father had to go back to Japan, so he took his family to Tule Lake. And so my husband was very bilingual, both his parents spoke no English. Loved everything Japanese in terms of the songs and everything. And so going through college, too, his interest was in Japanese history and language and everything. So he got his teaching credential two years after I did. And almost immediately, within a few years... in fact, we met when he, I took a one-year leave from my assignment and went to live in Japan for a year. And so he became my sub to teach the language. And then when he returned to his other assignment, within a couple of years or so he was sent downtown. And not just for Japanese, it was, he started the, what they called (America's) Intercultural Minorities. And I don't even know if anybody in the school district ever remembers him now. Even though he hasn't been gone that long, I don't know that people realize that he developed the entire program. And it was at Hamilton High, he brought in resources from the Jewish community, the Chinese, everything. In fact, he got to be such an expert that both communities started asking him to speak to their groups.

And about that same time, when he was developing those programs, a big part of that was what they called the Asian American Studies Kit. It started off at elementary, and then expanded into the high school, so it was K-12. The Asian American Studies Kit was basically a film strip with teacher's guides. And it was Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Filipino, Pacific Islander, I guess. But there were five groups. And so part of that program, that's about the time when, from the State, they mandated, it was called 3.3 something, it was... so teachers had to take it for a salary point. They had no choice.

MA: They had to take a multicultural education training?

IK: Right, and it was under this 3.3.

MA: Do you know what year this was?

IK: It would have been in the '70s.

MA: '70s, okay.

IK: And so that's when he trained a lot of teachers and administrators. Administrators also had to take it. It was required, mandated that all teachers go through it. And somewhere along the line, I don't know if it's still around, frankly. With Open Court and all these other things that have come in to take up all the time, there's no time for anything else. I don't know if that's what happened. But anyway, so it was about that time when he was working on all these guides and lessons that he and his friend, who was helping him with the trainings, talked about forming the Japanese American Historical Society. And it was formed by teachers. And the whole idea was to educate the general public. And we got married in '69, so it was during that time that, because of what he was doing, I became involved as well. And that's where I think most of my education... (...) through him and everything, and that's where I got a lot of the background and more awareness of it, and you start meeting people who really have this huge encyclopedic mind about things like Aiko Herzig. And you sit there and listen and you learn from them. There were so many people who knew so much, and I think that's the difference. And, of course, with time changing, you start having people who are now in positions to effect change from the government side. And I think that's really, really important. Unfortunately, our young people don't really seem to understand that because we don't have really young ones running for office.

<Begin Segment 13>

MA: Can you talk more about the historical society, its mission and how, I guess, it changed over the years as awareness, maybe, of the internment and of Japanese American history sort of proliferated, I guess, more on a societal level.

IK: Well, the whole idea, the whole intent of the historical society, part of the mission statement says to promote, preserve and perpetuate the Japanese American heritage. And as I said initially, it was because they were all teachers, it's what they knew best. And so it was through the avenue of in-services, lectures, and different things of that nature that would... so the first event we had was in Little Tokyo and it was on Nisei Week. And so he got what we call the pioneers, they're all gone now. Sam Minami, who was real important in the Gardena area with FOR, the basketball program, Friends of Richard. And very active with Nisei Week and all that. So Sam was on that, Shimizu Mitsuhiko, I think, Asahi Shoe Store downtown. And there was one other person, I don't remember now. So what we would do is get people who were kind of like a reservoir of knowledge, I guess. Experience, and that's how they had their knowledge. And we would have panels, lectures. But the big thing was putting on teacher in-services. And it wasn't just for L.A. Unified, because people could come from other school districts. And it was for a salary point, which is really the only way you're going to get a large number of teachers, because they can get salary points. And it was always called the Asian American Experience, and so it wasn't just the Japanese American experience. And so my husband would get people coming in from the college community who were experts in their fields. And they had the arts and crafts and that kind of stuff. And so we did that for about nine years. And then about that time, the attendance just dropped for two things. I think a lot of the teachers who had already satisfied the requirement weren't taking the classes anymore. 'Cause my husband would just change the number, and so they could come and take the class a number of times. And it wouldn't be exactly the same, 'cause speakers are different. And so there are people who got their 3.3 credit by taking our in-service over and over and over. But there were others, right, the Mexican American and the Native American. So there were other avenues for their 3.3 credit. So that was part of the reason that the attendance started to drop. And so I think -- and at about the ninth year, we quit doing it. It was just not enough bang for the buck, in other words, the response wasn't there.

MA: And you began publications, right?

IK: Right. So in '98, the first one we did was on the resettlement years. And then in 2002, it was "Turning Points," which had to do with being JA. That the assumption was that your turning point probably wouldn't have happened if you were anything other than JA. And then in 2004 it was Little Tokyo. I really didn't want to do that one because it was so concentrated. And I thought, "I'm going to have a heck of a time getting people to write," 'cause it's so hard to have people write. So I really wanted to do something along this Japanese American family line, something broader. But anyway, I got outvoted and so we did Little Tokyo. And it turned out to be actually a good move. With all the changes that have just, all of a sudden just, bam, happened just since 2004, just in the last couple of years with Little Tokyo. So I thought, hey, so when I was selling off the last of the books I kept telling, "This is going to be a collector's item because so many things have already changed." [Laughs] And so that, so it was a good move to do that. And I think that this one will probably be my last. I don't have any other themes that I'm thinking of doing.

MA: And this one you're working on now is about family?

IK: Right, the Japanese American family. I did five focus groups at my home. They were just day-long, from the morning to late afternoon, and I had groups of ten Nisei come for the sole purpose of just talking. Because I knew they would not all write anything. And so I thought at least maybe what I can do is get five, so that's fifty people, get their comments on tape, and then put that into the book as the results of these fifty people. And so, like a poll, represents a larger number. And I was surprised, actually. I went into these focus groups almost with, I guess, stereotype assumptions. I assumed that everybody that was coming there, or the majority, would say that their parents went to Hawaii first, worked on the plantation, and then came over here, whatever. Turned out to be opposite. The majority of people -- and a lot of them were from Hawaii, too, of course, their parents did go to Hawaii first. But the vast majority did not stop in Hawaii, they came straight here. And also I had the assumption that the majority... almost, it was at least half anyway. In fact, I was thinking that all of them, actually, I was thinking "all," and there never is an "all," right? But I thought all of them came with not higher than what is called high school -- it's not the same high school, when we say high school in Japan, it's really not high school here. I mean, it translates to high school. But anyway, because a lot of the parents had been born in the 1800s or turn of the century, 1900 to 1904, I just assumed that they would all come with not higher than high school. And one group came, and there were, I think, three or four college-educated. Not just Japan, but here. There was a father that had gone to Berkeley, another one went to Columbia, I said, "Oh, my god." [Laughs] And then the point of those focus groups also was to share their memories of how their parents parented them. And as Nisei parents, how was it with their kids? Kind of this comparison.

MA: That's interesting. What are some conclusions that you made or some things that people talked about?

IK: Well, this part ended up being the same, which, this was an assumption that was true. That the common, the commonality of all the groups when they talked about their parents, all the same. Work ethic was really strong. Worked hard, persevered, gave up a lot of things for the good of the children. All those values. And that's what I think I've said in the opening of one of my pieces is that you could get a room full of Nisei who don't know each other. When they start talking about how it was when they were kids, all of a sudden, "Yeah, my father did that, too." You know, it'll be very same. So the external things were all over the place. The education, the places they lived, even the jobs, those were pretty much a variety. But the way they lived, that was all the same.

MA: And what did they say, the Niseis, about their parenting style for the Sanseis? That's interesting to me as well.

IK: Not as strict as their parents. They... well, again, it depends on their ages. You get your older and younger. But you could say that more Nisei parents, in contrast to the Issei parents, did communicate with their kids, because they had English in common. Not as Dr. Spockish as maybe the Sansei parents.

<Begin Segment 14>

MA: When your children were growing up, how did they, how did you talk to them about your background and your husband's background and about the internment? Was that something that your kids asked you about growing up?

IK: No. Again, yeah, I'd have to ask my daughter and my son. But I don't remember... in fact, I know it didn't really happen with my mother and father. 'Cause I did mention during our phone interview that they were working from sunup to sundown. And so that was very number one, and the number two was the difference in language. Even though I went to Japanese school all my life, I was surrounded by English, and so that makes a big difference. And all the other factors of I don't think it really was the "Japanese way," the "Japanese-Japanese way," to sit down and talk with the kids. Although there were a few in my focus group where they talked about one father that told the kids stories. And it turned out to be, he said when he grew up he found out that his father had told them all these stories, and they ended up being about the Japanese tales of history. And so that's how he got his education without even realizing it. Now, with my kids, I don't know... because I think if something just comes up naturally, I don't know if there's a memory for things that just happen, especially if it happens over and over and over. I do know that my daughter, especially, more than my son, is very aware. Well, she's the one that founded that Asian American Studies (minor) at Fullerton. And then when we were doing the Historical Society activities, we started that Historical Society when they were... let's see. We incorporated in 1980, my son was born in '71, my daughter was born in '73. So since their childhood, that's all they remember is the Historical Society. But all the meetings were at our house, and my husband and I led twelve, I think, bus trips for the Manzanar pilgrimage. Our daughter, both of them, actually, while they were in high school, middle school and high school, they would go with us because they had to go. [Laughs] I wasn't gonna leave them home alone. And there were quite a few of the activities where they were also helping there, too. So I think it was kind of just this natural thing we're doing, and so you're doing it, too. So I think it's not just conversation. And then there were all those classes that they could take when they hit college.

MA: Right, 'cause they were born in the early '70s, and by that time, there were some Asian American... I don't know if there Asian American Studies programs at that time, but there were definitely classes.

IK: Yeah, and they were in school in the '80s and early '90s. Late '80s and early '90s, so by then.

<Begin Segment 15>

MA: I wanted to ask you about redress and your thoughts about, I guess, the historical legacy of redress and the importance of redress not only for Japanese Americans, but for other groups, and what your thoughts are about that.

IK: Yeah, unfortunately, and maybe it's true in other countries, but I don't know what happens in other countries so much. But it seems to be that in the United States, people don't sit up and pay attention if there isn't money attached, right? That's why I think there are so many lawsuits, because people go, "Whoa, that's a lot of money." People pay attention and notice when there's money attached. Now, $20,000 wasn't a whole lot, but I think for the average person, that sounds like a lot, because they don't really understand what it represented. Meaning it should have been a lot more. And I think what's his name, William Hohri, he was in Chicago at the time, when he was with NCJAR. And he was asking for, was it $100,000? $50,000, huge amount. And so, and I do know that Aiko mentioned, probably, to you, to that the redress was not enough to matter to the powers that be, to those who are in seats of power, to legislate change, to observe human and civil rights. And so in terms of the effectiveness, I'm pretty sure that there are many people who are in the knowledgeable group, the ramifications of everything. They probably would say, "Okay, it was good. There was compensation, but yet, it's not enough yet." But then we have a huge community, the population, who are not in that line of thinking or of knowledge. 'Cause I've learned a lot, really, about this redress thing, just in the last year. It's like, whoa, I never thought of that. And so I'm thinking that the average person would probably say, "Oh, yeah, that $20,000 was really good. I got a car," or, "it went to my college education." Because most of the times, I think the grandparents did give it to their kids and grandkids. And I don't know if they really appreciated what that represented, which is a shame, too. But I think that, I think our government really doesn't take it seriously, because with the Japanese Latin Americans, I mean, they kidnapped them and finally offered them $5,000.

MA: But after a long struggle.

IK: Yeah, right. Long, long time. But that $5,000 is like saying, okay, here's some pocket change, right? So was there a lesson learned? I don't really know. I think it's good that the different groups, NCRR from the L.A. area, they really worked hard. And so what I don't want to insinuate is that their efforts were... because their efforts were really, really important. But if the question is about what did the redress mean, in terms of what I've heard from different people in the last year, for the JAs who received it, for the JAs who fought for it, it has meaning. For the people who decided $20,000 is enough, I don't know if this is where their work in the long run mattered to these guys over here.

MA: Well, is there anything else you'd like to share? Final thoughts or anything at all?

IK: No, I don't think so. [Laughs]

MA: Okay. Well, this was just a wonderful interview, so thank you.

IK: Thank you very much.