<Begin Segment 5>

TI: Tell me about Gardena growing up. When you were growing up in Gardena, what was Gardena like?

FK: It was really a one-horse town, really quiet. If there was a fire and a fire engine would come charging down the street, we'd all run out and watch. [Laughs] It was fun. And then not only that, we lived in the Gardena city strip, which is between Vermont and Figueroa, all the way down from L.A. down to the harbor. Anything that happened within that strip, it was a different police station, the 77th. Anyhow, when a fire would start, we would have to wait from the fire engine to come from downtown L.A. By that time, whatever it was burned down. It was a real one-horse town. It was fun, and that was our excitement. [Laughs]

TI: Well, think back to those days. Who were your friends? When you were playing, as you got into school, who were your friends that you played with?

FK: Oh, grammar school, my best friend was Pauline Phelps, she was a block away. Her father was a detective with the LAPD. And they lived around the corner from us. And the homes on Orchard Avenue are about 200 feet deep, so everyone had cattle, or she had goats. I used to go over to her house and get some goat milk to drink. It was fun, very laid back, and really a boring place to grow up in.

TI: Well, what would be examples of things that you and Pauline would do to play? What would be...

FK: Well, in grammar school, we used to listen to the soap operas on radio, and that was exciting. We didn't know what it was, but it sounded good, you know, "to be continued." And then afternoon there was the Lone Ranger, it was all on radio. And Orphan Annie. Oh, I should have brought my ring. I have this decoder ring, this decoder ring from Orphan Annie. If you send ten cents plus the seal from an Ovaltine jar, they'll send you back this ring where you can translate tomorrow's clue, you know, "to be continued." It was exciting. That was the highlight of my day.

TI: And when would you listen to these radio shows? I mean, would it be after school?

FK: Yeah, after school, before suppertime. And then she would, she had to babysit her siblings, I didn't have anyone to babysit, but we'd be on the phone or running down the street to compare notes. That was life in the big city for me. [Laughs]

TI: Now did, at this time, when you were in grammar school, did, were you aware that you were Japanese and different than Pauline? Did that ever come up?

FK: Well, Pauline was half Italian and half some kind of hakujin, I don't know. And it never occurred to either of us that we were different. But I guess somewhere down the line, someone called me a "Jap," but that was closer to the war. It was, I remember jut thinking, "I'm not a 'Jap,' what's she saying?" And then I ran home from the playground and ran up to my mother's room and looked in the mirror and said, "Oh. I don't look like so-and-so, I am a 'Jap.'" I mean, that was a total shock. But by then I was, must have been ten or twelve years old, I don't know.

TI: Well, how many other Japanese families were in Gardena during this time?

FK: Oh, they were scattered. It wasn't a colony. There were, well, one girl lived across the street, down the block, but neither of us was allowed to cross the street, so we had to wait for one of our mothers to cross the street, Gardena Boulevard. There was no traffic, but we had to follow the rules. And with that girlfriend, she was Japanese, we used to climb trees all the time, and that was our form of play. Climb trees and use those bean shooters, you know. That was fun.

TI: Yeah, we called 'em pea shooters.

FK: Pea shooters, yeah.

TI: And so like in school, in our class, like how many Japanese would be in your class?

FK: My class there was only one, one guy. Good, one-fourth were Mexicans, and the rest were white. A whole variety of whites. It was during the days when you used to see people who looked like Okies go through town, and we'd feel sorry for them, because a lot of the kids didn't have shoes on, I remember that. I thought, "I want to go to school without shoes," you know.

TI: I'm sorry, you said you wanted to go to school...

FK: Yeah. "How come those kids get to go to school without shoes?" I used to envy them.

TI: Now, why? I'm curious...

FK: It looked, it looked cool.

TI: [Laughs] More comfortable?

FK: Yeah.

TI: Okay.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.