<Begin Segment 7>

TI: So I'm going to jump now to December 7, 1941. You were, you weren't that old, you were...

KK: Nine.

TI: Nine years old. So do you recall that day, December 7th?

KK: Oh, very much.

TI: So tell me about that day.

KK: We were in the car going to church, and the radio was on and said that, you know, war had started, so we went home instead. And then everybody was just listening to the radio. Well, my brothers, their friends kept calling them to, "Come out, come out, we'll go..." And my mother says, "You boys, you cannot go anywhere, you cannot go out with those boys." Because they were all going to go out and see what was happening. And that's when life kind of changed for all of us. And then I had to go to school on Monday, and usually when I go to school, people would say, "Hello," and, "Hi," and, you know, smile and everything. That day they turned around and they went in their stores, they turned their back on me, and I just didn't know what. And I got to school, and my teacher was so good, because she kept me busy in the class, in the building, doing flowers and stuff, and later on I realized she did that because she didn't want the kids to tease me. If I'd gone out, you know, in the playground, I probably, because going home I got teased, of course. I got chased. But by then I realized, you know. I said, "Who's the enemy? Who's the Jap?" I'm looking around, "Oh, that's me."

TI: You know, on that Sunday, December 7th, did your parents say anything to perhaps prepare you, in terms of what might happen the next day?

KK: No, nobody said anything to me.

TI: It was just, but then there was some apprehension when your mother didn't want your brothers to go out. So she sensed that it might not be good for them to be out there.

KK: That's right.

TI: So she probably sensed something, but didn't really say why.

KK: Just that, because we were Japanese, "You better just stay in."

TI: Now, when the war broke out, you mentioned your oldest brother, Buddy, where was he?

KK: He was in Japan.

TI: So tell me what he was doing in Japan.

KK: Well, he went over in 1930, I kind of think it was '37, '38, sometime like that, as a reporter and correspondent to cover the Japanese-Chinese War. He went over to cover that, to see what it was like for the Japanese newspapers in America, because, of course, the U.S. was with the Chinese, and so all the papers and all the politics was, you know, heavily against Japan and everything. So he wanted to know what was really happening, so he went over. And then he came back while he wrote articles and sent them to the Japanese papers, Rocky Mountain Shimpo and the one in New York and all over. So when he came back, he made a tour, a speaking tour, and gathered money so that he could go back again. And so then he went back to Japan. And while he was in Japan, he took my sister over once, and left her in Tokyo, Hana, and the family was hoping she would marry some Japanese and be, you know... but just before she went over she met this artist and they had fallen in love, and the family didn't realize that he went up to see her before she left, she left from San Francisco, and so of course her heart was here and not there. But she went through all the things, they dressed her in Nihon, in Japanese costume and everything and sent her picture all around, to some very important people, too, and people were interested in her, but she wasn't interested.

TI: But when the war broke out, Buddy was in Japan, as a correspondent?

KK: Yes.

TI: And he was working primarily for the Japanese newspapers in the United States.

KK: U.S. Yes, right. Actually he was just a freelancer, so he really wasn't backed by any paper, he just would send it to all the papers. And then my brother Stanley, who is ten years older than I --

TI: Before we go there I just want, so... before we get to the others, your story and the others, so what happened to Buddy when he was in Japan? When he was, so Buddy's in Japan, the war breaks out, he's a U.S. citizen, and what happened to him?

KK: Well, it was just, not too long ago that I read this book about him that somebody had written and found out that he had spent one day in the army, and that one day made him lose his U.S. citizenship. But then they realized he didn't speak or write or read Japanese, and they took him out of the army. But they used him in Shanghai to take over the newspapers and magazines that were run by French and English, and so he ran the newspapers and magazines then, in Shanghai for the Japanese, in English, for the English-speaking. And they gave him a, kind of like a uniform that he wore, so he looked like he was in the army, but he didn't, he really wasn't. And then he had, before the war started, he had met this Japanese girl in Shanghai and married her, and that was one of the, another reason why he couldn't come back, because he couldn't bring her. We had sent my brother Stanley over, when Stanley was, I think about fourteen, fifteen, something like that. We had an uncle who had a import-export business in Shanghai, and so Stanley worked for him and learned some Chinese and some Japanese. And when Buddy felt that the war was going to come on, he sent Stanley back and he sent Hana back to the U.S., and both of them came on different boats, but it was the last trip for both of those boats, yeah.

TI: And do you know why Buddy decided to stay in Japan and not...

KK: 'Cause he has, he had a wife.

TI: Oh, at that time, he had a wife.

KK: He had a wife and couldn't bring her, so he decided to stay, yeah.

TI: I see, okay.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.