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TI: Okay, you mentioned you were thirteen years old. You're a boy, thirteen, what memories -- when you think back to being thirteen and this was happening -- what memories sort of really stick in your mind about this period?

HK: You know, I was a fairly good baseball player. And normally seventh and eighth graders made the team, but I made the team when I was in the sixth grade. And so... and we all wanted to get into the junior varsity in Olympia High School. That was a goal of all these small schools all over, you know, to make the team in high school. But so that's my memory, the fact that I couldn't make, I couldn't play, 'cause I was taken away. And when I was in camp I still vividly remember that, you know... here's the funny things that you miss, first of all, I missed the neon lights -- pitch black in camp. I missed the hamburgers and hot dogs, and then most of all I missed my friends, I missed my friends back home. In fact...

TI: These were your Caucasian friends that you missed?

HK: My Caucasian friends, yeah, back in...

TI: Just going back a little bit to that, I'm curious, you mentioned baseball, what position did you play?

HK: Oh, I played shortstop.

TI: Okay. So you were one of the better players.

HK: And if I jump, you know... I was on the Tule Lake -- the camp was Tule lake -- and we were on the All-City. There was 25,000 people in camp and that was a pretty large city in California -- population-wise. And we were on the championship team of the camp and I played shortstop then. So, so it was a loss for Olympia high school. [Laughs]

TI: Right. Well, I was thinking -- because of sports and I played a lot of sports and I know there's a lot of camaraderie -- how did your, especially your Caucasian teammates, sort of react to you leaving or having to leave? Did you have any interaction with them?

HK: Well, they couldn't understand, and they also couldn't understand why I couldn't just leave. But we were still thirteen, twelve and thirteen, so you know, there wasn't any other reactions, I guess. But this Wilbur Cane wrote me a letter for one year, that is periodically perhaps. And I kept every letter, I read every letter. And you know, but after a year when we were separated we have not much in common to talk about. So the letters gradually decreased and pretty soon I was cut off from the outside world completely. And, but I... you know, the thing that I missed the most in camp was my friends, there's no question. And I pictured even them playing baseball, and I was not on the team and so on.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.