<Begin Segment 4>

TI: Do you have any childhood memories of, of Hawaii, the Big Island?

MK: Of the Big Island, yes, I do. Some -- well, not too great, but I know that the, in those days I always felt that place was so wet and I wondered how come the houses were so high off the ground. Didn't realize that because of the amount of rain that we had, the houses had to be high off the ground. I know it created some nice storage area and nice place to play, play at when we had inclement weathers.

TI: So you'd just play under the house?

MK: Under the house, yeah. The house, under the house must be about six, eight feet high off the ground. And there were a lot of steps going up to the veranda.

TI: So it's kind of like a, maybe like a basement, so it was used for storage and play area a little bit?

MK: Well, not that elaborate, was just plain dirt and the house was built on stilts, and it was... figuring that my uncle had lived there for ten years, and who knows who many other people lived there before him, but it was dry, dusty. Every place else was wet. And then there was a long hall right in front, in front of the church that created as a meeting hall or the language school, and also a church.

TI: So this was on a plantation?

MK: On the plantation property, yes.

TI: Okay, and so, so it wasn't necessarily a church. It was more, you say, a meeting place.

MK: Meeting place that people... well, the people had accepted as part of the, and the plantation made a provision that they could use it as their church.

TI: And so your father had double duty. He had, he was not only the minister, but he also ran the Japanese language school.

MK: That's correct.

TI: Do you know how large a group he had to...

MK: I have no idea. He handled everything. The closest church that Japanese -- well, the Joudo Shuu mission -- the next church was at Laupahoehoe, which is about, about ten miles, fifteen miles away, and then the other side was Honokaa, so he was in between two big churches and this was a small country... in those days all you had was the bus that you could rely on, so the people couldn't go to the either, either church. It's too far away, so then this was, Ookala was formed.

TI: But then eventually the, they appointed him his own church?

MK: Yes, eventually, in 1938.

TI: And so he left Ookala. Did they replace him with someone?

MK: No. By that, by that time, I believe 1938, most of the plantation workers, especially the Japanese, left the plantations. By that time we'd started to move, the Japanese were starting to move out of... by the time my dad came they were starting to move out of plantation. They were going to their own farming, or going to become merchants.

TI: So it's probably always was viewed as a temporary situation.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.