<Begin Segment 12>

TI: So let's -- anything else before we go to Santa Anita?

KK: Then we went to Santa Anita. And we lived in -- Santa Anita had the stables and all, but the parking lot, they built all these barracks, and they were just barracks with tarpaper around, all you had was a bed and a mattress.

TI: So you were in the parking lot, the barracks were?

KK: So we were in the parking lot, T-27. I can still remember that.

TI: And what were some of your thoughts and memories when you first got there?

KK: Oh, we just, I was just, for me it was all confusion and everything. And I thought, what a place. I'd never seen so many Japanese before, in one place, for one thing. [Laughs]

TI: And how was that for you, because, yeah, you...

KK: Terrible.

TI: So explain, why was that terrible?

KK: Because a lot of them spoke Japanese and I didn't, and the kids would play these Japanese games together, and I couldn't because I didn't know Japanese and I didn't know how to play them, you know. It was, it was stressful.

TI: So you felt, like, a little left out, or a little...

KK: Oh, I was really left out. And I was tall for my age, so with any Japanese group I was, my head was up there.

TI: How did the family dynamics change, going from your home to Santa Anita? What were some of the changes?

KK: Well, of course, once we got to Santa Anita, the boys kind of went their way, and my mother didn't have a whole lot of say about what they'd do or anything. The girls were more, we'd, she could handle us better. But my sister Amy took off, and she hung around with the fellows from Hawaii. She'd always loved Hawaii, she would listen Hawaii music and every Saturday we'd have the radio on to "Hawaii Calls," and she just loved Hawaii. And when we got to camp and she found all these Hawaii musicians and all, oh my goodness. You couldn't keep her away from them, and she eventually married Alfred, the guitar, steel guitar player, and then they went to Wyoming, Heart Mountain, together.

TI: From Santa Anita they went?

KK: Yeah.

TI: So did they get married in camp, in Santa Anita?

KK: Well, they took 'em outside and, to the city hall, and married them and brought them back in.

TI: So was there a party or reception or anything like that?

KK: No, nothing.

TI: And so how did it make you feel, to see one of your older sisters leave and... at this point it was, what, Hana, Mei...

KK: Mei, Amy...

TI: Amy, then Stanley...

KK: Ernie...

TI: Ernie, Robert, Edison...

KK: Edison and I. And then Chris Ishi was an artist, and he started to live with us in L.A., because you only could go five miles from your house and where he was living was beyond five miles from where he could work, so he lived with us and he could go to work. And he was an artist, and he worked for Disney. So when we evacuated, he evacuated as part of our family, and so he was with us all the way into Amache.

TI: And so what was the connection with Chris and your family? Why, why...

KK: Just friends.

TI: With your father, or your...

KK: No, with my sisters and brothers. It's just he needed a place to stay and we said, "Okay, come stay with us."

TI: So he became part of your family.

KK: And then he became part of our family.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.