Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Hitoshi H. Kajihara Interview
Narrator: Hitoshi H. Kajihara
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: University of California, Los Angeles
Date: September 11, 1997
Densho ID: denshovh-khitoshi-01-0003

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TI: So you're thirteen, you're a boy, those are formative years. If you were to try to sort of summarize the camp experience, how would you summarize or characterize your experiences in camp?

HK: [Pauses] Well, that's... characterize...

TI: Let me ask you, how long were you at Tule Lake?

HK: Yeah. I was in Tule Lake for three and a half years and released in 1945, December 1945. It was not, well, it's hard to recollect, you know. I don't want to overdramatize because we were kids, so I really didn't appreciate what we were being subjected to, the injustice and all, until, of course, much later. What I remember is we had good teachers. Mostly they were Quakers. We went to school... there was no school for about, I would say about eight months to a year, I guess, when we went in and then they started school and then we went continuously. I went to both English school, and Japanese language school in Tule Lake. So I was taking about ten subjects and still had a little time to play softball. It wasn't hardball in camp, we would only play softball. I think, as I recollect now, I think camp was good to the extent that my teachers kept telling me that we were good Americans and that we should go on and show what good Americans we were. And I think that registered and so I've always felt that I must do much better than my competition. And so I think I studied hard, always studied hard. And one thing I want to say, the school in Tule Lake was wonderful and I will give you one example. A fellow classmate of mine, his name is Richard Tanaka, and we both were in the same class in camp and at Richmond High School where we went one semester before we went to Berkeley. And when you went to Berkeley he got all A's except one, he got a B in ROTC. Now, I didn't do that well, but I managed to get out. But that tells you the kind of school we had.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.