Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Masamizu Kitajima Interview
Narrator: Masamizu Kitajima
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Honolulu, Hawaii
Date: June 12, 2010
Densho ID: denshovh-kmasamizu-01-0032

<Begin Segment 32>

TI: Now, other than you and your siblings, were there any other kids that returned from the mainland, they were in camps, to Kapaa?

MK: No.

TI: So you were the only family.

MK: The only one. Only family in Kapaa. There was one in Waheiwa, or Waimea High School, but that's, that's all I know of.

TI: Okay, so they really didn't understand that you didn't get good schooling, and so when you came back they just put you in the lowest, lowest class, which was probably very difficult for you.

MK: It was, and yet it wasn't. When I came back I faced racial... well, I faced a lot of problem beside from the camp experience from the local people. Not the local people, but my peers. That, people felt that -- well, my peers, they... I come back in the middle school era where you have gangs, you have, what they call that, bullying. I was an outcast. I came, I came as a concentration kid, concentration camp kid who hadn't been here, so I became an outcast. And I would go to school, I would not make half a day. I'd get bullied, get beat up for any reason at all, any possibility. I get my clothes torn off of me; I'd go home naked. And these are all by Japanese kids, not by gaijin kids, but Japanese kids.

TI: And so you were an outcast, was it because you, you were in the camps?

MK: Yes, because I was, I went to camp.

TI: And what, why, why so? I mean, what were they, what were they thinking?

MK: I was a shame to the Japanese.

TI: Oh, so to your classmates, these certain people in your class, they thought that because you were put in a camp something was wrong, that you --

MK: With me.

TI: Yeah, wrong with you and your family, and that you were a shame to the whole Japanese community, and they would bully you.

MK: I faced that for about three months. I just took it for a while. It got to a point I couldn't take it anymore.

TI: But when you, but they said they would sometimes tear your clothes off, so when you would come home without clothes... I mean, what would people say? I mean, people knew, adults would know this was going on.

MK: No. No, this is going on in class.

TI: But a teacher would, would say, "Where did you go?"

MK: "Where did Masa go?" "Oh, he went home."

TI: And sometimes you would come with maybe a cut or a bruise?

MK: No, I wouldn't get physically, they wouldn't bruise me. They'd kick me in my stomach. They tie, they'd take my pants off, tie my pants up, knots and knots, tie it together. Sometimes tear it off, sometimes cut layer, sometimes no clothes.

TI: 'Cause then your parents must have known something was going on, because you would run out of clothes.

MK: Yes, but I wouldn't tell 'em. Because I didn't want them to... I felt like what must've... it was like, in those days, if you got scolded by a teacher you must have been wrong. That's why you got scolded. Didn't matter. That's the way I was taught. So I wouldn't tell them. If I thought that, if I told them I'd probably get punished again because I did something wrong, so I never said anything. Just keep, kept it to myself.

TI: But in this case it wasn't necessarily a teacher or an adult, it was sort of other kids doing this to you.

MK: Kids.

TI: And so you, even then you didn't want to, to...

MK: I didn't want to let anybody know. I was kinda, in a sense, I guess I was ashamed to be getting treated this way. Until I decided I was gonna rebel against somehow. Took a Sunday to decide that, so I picked on one of 'em when he was alone, when there was no five, seven people against me. Hit him with a baseball bat 'cause I was waiting for him. Then I told him, said, "You and I are one on one now. Take me out." Before he could do anything I hit him with a bat. He, "Next time you see me you better not be with the rest of the guys." Nobody came after me after that. But then there was repercussion to that. Nobody wanted to be my friend. Nobody wanted to associate with me. Became isolated. Now I'm one man by myself.

TI: And this lasted all the way through...

MK: Most of my high school years.

TI: Junior high school and high school.

<End Segment 32> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.