<Begin Segment 10>

TI: Going back to school, Washington, so as the weeks went on, did you notice any differences at school or any assemblies or any events that happened as the word got out that the Japanese would have to leave Seattle? Do you recall anything?

KT: Well, I recall those things that we would have to leave. I remember a Caucasian male came up to our hotel window, you know, where we do our business transaction, and wanted to speak to my dad. And he said that we were gonna have to leave the place in there, and he was willing to buy the business, I don't know, couple hundred dollars or something like that. And my dad got so mad that he actually grabbed that guy and shoved him down the stairway, you know. And that's when I said, "Wow, I didn't think he had..." I said, "Wow, my dad's pretty strong." [Laughs] And he made a remark, "I came to the U.S. with nothing, and if I have to leave Seattle with nothing, that's perfectly fine with me." And at that time, he made up his mind that he was not going to sell the business. We kept it, so when we went to camp, we had a place to come back to. And at that time, we had a 1939, I think it was a Plymouth vehicle. And he said, "No, I'm gonna, we're gonna store there," so he stored it at the Kono garage on Fourteenth or something like that, and there was a whole bunch of cars that he actually had the wheels blocked off and stored there. And when we were in camp, Reverend Andy, Andrews, of the Baptist church, he would come to Seattle and then on the way back, from Seattle back to the camp, he would pick up cars that people had, others like my parents that had cars there, and bring it back to them. So on one of those trips, my dad made arrangement with him, for him to pick up our car, and brought it back to Minidoka. So we actually had a car in Minidoka. And at that time, I was too young to have a driver's license, and my brother was in the service, so I was using his driver's license in my pocket. [Laughs] I would carry it around with me. And when we left the camp, my dad, mom and myself, we, I drove the car, helped him drive the car back to Seattle. And my sister and other brother came back later by train.

TI: Okay. So, so he kept the car. But what about the business? How did, who took care of the business during the war?

KT: Oh. At that time, it was a Swedish laborer that was working in the shipyard down there. And they were from the North, I think it was North Dakota, and he made offer that he wanted to bring his family over there. And they were willing to run that hotel for us, his wife would be running the hotel and their families. So we made arrangement for them to take over the hotel. And they managed the business and took care of the hotel, made sure that the rent was paid. So during the, when we were in camp, we still had the hotel. That's why as soon as we were allowed to come back home, my dad said, "We're going back there." We had the place to go to. But they ran the hotel for about two or three years, and then in the last year, they made enough money that they were buying another hotel up the street. And I remember them writing letters to us telling my dad that, hey, they didn't want to leave us high and dry, so they will get another family from their hometown to come over there and live with them, and they were gonna take over the hotel. Unfortunately, the husband of that second family was a drinker. And he actually would go into the different people's room and steal their drinks and drink it. And the tenants caught onto that, and one of them changed, put some hairsprays and whatnot. And then the one whiskey bottle, and he got sick, real sick drinking that stuff. [Laughs] That was the story that was told to me later.

TI: Going back to that first Swedish family that managed the property, do you know what the business arrangement was between your father and the Swedish family, how that was managed in terms of, in terms of rent? Would some of that money go, be sent to your father in camp, or would they keep it? Do you know how that worked?

KT: I really, I remember Weston Wheeler were a realtor there, and they were the middleman. And they collected the money and made sure that the rent for the building was paid. And I don't know what the division of the profit was, but... whether we made money on that or not. But there must have been some kind of a cash reimbursement.

TI: But your dad was confident that eventually the family would be able to come back to Seattle, so he kept everything.

KT: I guess so. I mean, well, like I said, he made up his mind that if he had to leave with nothing, that was fine with him. So he never got pushed into selling the business or selling the car or anything like that. He hung on to it.

TI: Good. Okay, so he finds someone to manage the business, he stores the car, describe your family and how it went from, I guess, Seattle to Puyallup. What was that like for you?

KT: I don't really remember how I got to Puyallup. It must have been by bus, I think.

TI: Do you, like, remember what you packed in your bags or anything like that?

KT: No. I do remember that we had some Japanese language books, our textbooks that was burnt. I guess certain color textbook was bad to have in the family, and those were supposed to be burnt, you weren't supposed to keep 'em. I think those were the black, black in color, and then another, other textbooks were brown in color, and they were all right to keep. Now, I may have had the two colors reversed, but I remember my, they were throwing away things into the fireplace, you know, I mean, potbelly, to get rid of them.

TI: Now, when you think about those two books, brown versus black, what was inside, say, the black one that you burned? What was it about that one that made that bad?

KT: I really don't... I guess some of the wordings inside the textbook was too pro-Japanese, I guess. And it might have been, all been rumored that those were the things that was bad, because it was a panic situation. If you hear one scuttlebutt, and they will say that, and then they will be throwing those away.

TI: So what were some other things that you guys heard? So one kind of book was bad, so you burned that. Do you recall any other kind of rumors or things like that from that time?

KT: No, I really don't. I remember my dad was not the, not the community leaders that were interned for further one, but I guess he was the second level tier, and it fell upon their group to keep the church okay and take care of 'em. And I remember him getting pushed into the role of having to manage the affairs when all these leaders were pulled out and sent to the internment camps. The next layer of people were called upon to fill in some of those duties and things like that. So I remember him being quite active in that for the Buddhist church.

TI: So that's what I was gonna ask. So your family went to the Buddhist church before the war? That's the church?

KT: Yeah.

TI: But you mentioned Reverend Andrews, the...

KT: Baptist church.

TI: ...Baptist church. So did your father have a relationship with Reverend Andrews or the Baptist church?

KT: No. He just heard that they were bringing cars and stuff from, scuttlebutt in the camp. So he made arrangement for them to bring our car, yeah.

TI: Okay, good.

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