<Begin Segment 20>

TI: Let's talk about your father, though. Would he, like, go to meetings, or talk with other men about this?

KK: No. I guess people would talk, but then he wouldn't go to meetings. He was funny.

TI: Now, did you get a sense that he was starting to talk to your mother about going back to, going back to Japan or his thoughts about that?

KK: In the beginning, and then after a while, then he didn't and then my mother left, you know. Because my sister had a baby in Amache and had problems with her breast, and so we, my sister Hana asked if my mother could come and take care of Mei. And we sent her out. And then we told her, "Don't come back to camp," so then it ended up I took care of the three men.

TI: So you started cooking and...

KK: I did all the, everything, housekeeping.

TI: And how old were you at this point?

KK: Oh, gosh, what? Ten, eleven, twelve? Twelve.

TI: And so how was that for you, taking care of the boys, even though you're the youngest, taking care of three men?

KK: It just, it was just one of those things. You just accept things, you know. You just do.

TI: During this time did you get closer to your father?

KK: Oh, yeah.

TI: So describe that. How did you get closer to your father?

KK: Well, we spent more time together, and I saw the things that he was doing and all. He did a lot of really very good things for us in camp. The way the barrack was built, we had one room and a half. And in this half room was a bunk bed and a single bed, and I was on the top of the bunk bed. Well, the wall to the (next apartment), was open, so if I stood on my bunk bed and looked up I could look over, you know, and all the sounds would go back and forth. And then the other part was, my folks made the bedroom in the back, and then the kitchen, and then it went out and my father made a porch. He got cement and he laid out this big porch. And then he had a man come and they built this porch, and it was another nice, big room for us. And he did all kinds of interesting things. He had, he figured out how to make a lamp that went up and down. It went up and over here was a can of nails and stuff as weight, and so it would go up and down over the table. In the kitchen, in the corner, he made a round, he made cupboards, but he made a round thing so that that corner was not wasted. I could put pots and pans and, you know. And above was storage area, and we wanted to cover it, and he took a sheet and he tie-dyed it. We dyed it in, we thought was yellow, and when it came out it was yellow and almost kind of like a brown, but it was beautiful. It was like pineapples, all over. So we hung that up. He was very creative in what he did. And then every day he would listen to the news, and he'd write it in Japanese. And then he'd go out and he'd -- there was an area where he would go, and there was a stage and a podium -- and he'd stand at the podium and people would come, bring their folding chairs and listen to him give the news in Japanese. And sometimes he'd do that twice a day, other times three times, it depends on how the war was going.

TI: I'm curious how that was received. Because, so he was listening to the --

KK: English.

TI: -- American --

KK: American, yeah.

TI: -- news and reporting that --

KK: In Japanese.

TI: In places like Tule Lake and other places where people are going back to Japan, many people thought Japan was winning the war, and that, you know, the American news was all propaganda and it was all being spun in favor of the Americans. So when he would announce the American news, did you get a sense that people maybe questioned or, what he was saying and what he was hearing?

KK: I really don't know. I wasn't aware of what he, how people affected him.

TI: But that was interesting. So people wanted to hear the news, and so he would listen to the radio, take notes, and then go out there and talk about that. Did you ever go to any of these?

KK: No. And then one time, one time he got so excited about something and his teeth fell out. [Laughs] He said he had to get his teeth and put 'em back in.

TI: Do you know what that was? So he's listening to the radio and he got so excited?

KK: No, no, when he was talking.

TI: Oh, when he was talking?

KK: And so we heard that from somebody else that my father, his teeth fell out while he was talking.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.