<Begin Segment 14>

TI: Earlier you mentioned how your dad stored a car in Seattle, eventually it was brought to camp, and how you used your brother's ID, his driver's license. Any stories about driving around during camp with the car?

KT: Well, we weren't allowed to drive the car inside the campground, but when we went to Twin Falls or something like that, we were able to drive the car there. I remember an incident when a friend of ours in the same block, and a good friend of my parents, he died, and then the cremation was going to be down in Salt Lake City. So we had to, they had to get down to Salt Lake City, so my father offered our car. And so my dad and myself and then the deceased family, we drove them down to Salt Lake City. And then on some of the other excursions around there, I remember one I did a Hollywood stop on a crosswalk, a stop sign where you just cruise up to there and slow down and then make a turn without really coming to a full stop. I did that, and pretty soon a siren is roaring in back of me. We stop, and at that time, my dad knew I didn't have a driver's license, and he was really mad at me for pulling a stunt like that and getting stopped. And he was chewing me out in Japanese, and when the state patrol officer, he came up and he hears all this Japanese and he said, "It's not good for you guys to be speaking a different language. Because for all I know, you may be cussing me up and down and I don't like that." And he was telling that to me, I said, "Don't worry, Officer. He's cussing the heck out of me for doing such a foolish thing and getting stopped." [Laughs] And he took pity on me because he says, "Okay, I'll just give you a warning ticket." He didn't even look at my license. If he really studied it, he would have said, "Hey, this ain't the right...

TI: But he figured you were getting enough of a reprimand from your father that he would need to...

KT: He let me go.

TI: Oh, interesting. So when you took these two down to Salt Lake City, did you do the driving? Did you drive down to Salt Lake City?

KT: I drove to Salt Lake City, yeah. My dad would drive some, and then when he didn't feel like driving, he would let me drive the car.

TI: And so this was before you were sixteen, or how old were you at this time?

KT: Well, I couldn't get a driver's license, so I must have been just... was it eighteen then or sixteen? I'm not too sure. I think it might have been eighteen, so I could have been...

TI: Sixteen or seventeen. Your older brother, Tosh, you mentioned, so he went into the military service? And so where did he serve, your brother Tosh?

KT: Oh, he was in the 442, (L) Company, I think it was.

TI: Okay. And then any other memories of Minidoka?

KT: Well, I mean, we sometimes will talk, when our group gets together, we'll talk about those days. And we all agreed that our age group was not affected by that internment period, and we really had a lot of fun, and that was it.

TI: Well, how about your parents? Did you see any changes in them? Or what did they do to spend the time?

KT: You know, I really don't recall too much of what they were doing. I knew they were around the camp and they were home, and that's about... well, my dad was a fireman. He worked as a fireman down there, and I don't know what, I don't think my mother was working there. My dad was working as a fireman.

TI: Okay.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.