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TI: And you had three children?

KK: We have three children.

TI: And why don't you go through the three children, in terms of their...

KK: Kris, Kris is the oldest. He was born in Michigan, 'cause after we got married we went to Michigan, where Ed had to finish school, and then we stayed on for him to get his master's degree. So I stayed there five years. He was there eight years, and I was there five years. And I had Kris there. Then we came back to Hawaii because his father had cancer, and they said his father wouldn't talk to anybody or do anything. And when any men came up to him, they, his father would always call him by my husband's name, Tetsuo, so they said, "Tetsuo, maybe you should come home." So we went home and he got his father well enough to get out, and his father made pots for everybody, you know... he got him out so that he would be working with people, and got out talking and... just helped his father a lot.

TI: So that brought you back to, to Kona.

KK: And that's what brought us back to Hawaii. And then I got pregnant and I kept having difficulty with this pregnancy, so we'd have to go (stay) with his mother and father in Pearl City. We lived in, at that time we lived in Kaneohe. I don't know if you know where that is, but that's on the other side of the island on Oahu. And then we were going back and forth all the time. So I finally had to have an emergency caesarean and had my daughter Julie. And then after that we built a house in Waipahu, and we moved there. And that's where my father came and stayed with us, in Waipahu. We had a nice life while we were there.

TI: And you had one more daughter then?

KK: And then... I thought I was finished with having the two kids, and then all of a sudden, "Oh, I'm pregnant again." And it was Tricia, and, again, I was having difficulties, so there was a point where I had to stay off my feet until she was born, and again, she was a caesarean, also. After that I had my tubes tied, so I only have the three kids.

TI: Okay, good. So we're almost out of time. Is there anything else that you wanted to talk about?

KK: Well, Ed and I lived in Hawaii, and then the government sent him to school at UC Berkeley for a second master's. He already had a master's, but he got a second master's degree. And it so happened that the advisor happened to be the same man who was an advisor at Michigan State. So we had a good time there. And then from Berkeley he was sent to Washington, D.C. And I had come home to Hawaii, and so he says, "You have to... we've got to move," and so I got the kids together and we went to Arlington, Virginia.

TI: And what was Ed's field of study? What made him move from place to place?

KK: Oh, well, he was a civil engineer by education, but when he (worked) the Federal Aviation Administration, they just, he just went up and up and up and... until he was more in administration than in... and so then we went to Washington, D.C. for five years and enjoyed that very much. Then we wanted to come back to Hawaii, and we'd gone on a vacation, we came back and the telephone company knocked on our door and says, "Your telephone must be off the hook because we've been trying to (check it as) somebody's been trying to call you from Hawaii and we haven't been able to put it through." So sure enough, there was a phone upstairs that was off the hook, and when we put it on we got this call from Hawaii and they said, "Ed, do you want to come back to Hawaii?" He says, "Yes," so we came back to Hawaii and they sent us out to Guam. [Laughs] And he was the, they had a new position there, and so he was the... oh, Administrator of FAA for Guam and the Pacific. And so FAA had its own little village, like. And FAA and the weather, U.S. weathermen lived in this. And so he was kind of like the mayor of that, plus he had to deal with the navy, the air force, the Guam government, and all that. That was very interesting. Then when the Vietnamese start coming through, FAA, and naval air station were in charge of one of the camps, and so we went there and he helped them do all kinds of things. And we have a picture book that I'm going to take to L.A. with me and try to give to some Vietnamese organization, that tells of all the things that we did there, you know. And I worked as a Red Cross worker and went to all the various camps to look for pregnant women and children who needed to, you know, orphans who needed to be cared for. So we had a very interesting time while in Guam.

TI: Wow, yeah, really rich, rich life. So, Kay, we're out of time. This has been such a pleasure, a really interesting several hours talking about these things. So thank you so much.

KK: You're welcome.

TI: And I'm glad we came all the way to Kona for this. So thank you.

KK: Well, I got to tell you the rest of Ed because after we -- it could be off of this --

TI: No, we can... go ahead.

KK: But he decided while we were in Japan that he wanted to retire and be a coffee farmer again. And so his sister found out about this farm, and so we, sight unseen we bought the farm and came and started this coffee farm. And then he was, we were contacted by a lady who was getting old and she learned how to make a certain kind of a hat, to weave a lauhala hat, a certain kind of lauhala hat, because when she was, like, thirteen, her parents left her. And a teacher and a Hawaiian lady took her under their wings, and the Hawaiian lady taught her to make this hat and told her, "You don't teach this to anybody else. You just make this hat, and you take it to Mrs. Kimura. Mrs. Kimura's lauhala shop will sell the hats for you and you can live off of this." She did this for years and years. She was in her eighties, and so she says, "If I die nobody will know how to make this hat." She asked Mrs. Kimura, "What shall I do?" And so Mrs. Kimura said, "Let's have a class," and we had six people, and she taught us all, but Ed's the only one that could really remember it and to teach it to other people. And so he started making these lauhala hats. Well then pretty soon he got in with the lauhala group, and he learned how to make other hats. And you'll see the hat I'm wearing now. He made that. And he makes beautiful hats, all kinds of hats, and his hats are, people really want them. So he runs a coffee farm, so we have coffee to sell, and he makes hats and he sells hats, and that's how we live here.

TI: Good. Well, again, thank you so much.

(Narr. note: After Guam we lived fourteen years on Oahu. Ed was the first "local" to get a Division Chief's job in the FAA. At the time, Hawaii was the center for the Pacific Region. When the FAA combined the Pacific and West Coast Regions into one Region we could have moved to Los Angeles. We decided to stay in Hawaii and Ed had the top job for the FAA here. In 1986 Ed was appointed to be the FAA manager for the whole Asian Area. His office was in the Tokyo American Embassy and he travelled all over Asia as far as India. We spent three years in Tokyo. He came of age to retire and did so in 1989.)

<End Segment 28> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.