<Begin Segment 17>

AI: Tell me about -- now there are so many people there and you mentioned some activities that were going on. And you were telling me a little bit about some of the social activities and can you show these to me and explain a little bit about what was going on? [Hands documents to LK]

LK: Well this is, you know, like they'd have dances and the different blocks would sponsor and these were like invitations or tickets to the, you know. So like this one says, "A Date with 15." Well, Block 15 had sponsored that particular dance. And that was one of the things that our age group enjoyed. So we looked forward to going to dances and...

AI: Could you read that one, what it says on the inside there?

LK: Okay. It says, "Dining Hall 5, 7:30 p.m., couples only," and then, "patrons and patronesses, Mr. and Mrs. Uchida and Mr. and Mrs. Aoki." That was January 29th. And it says, "Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might, go and jive at 5 tonight." And this is really just a simple piece of paper, but some people were pretty ingenious and we made do with whatever we had. So we, this is one of the tickets here.

AI: Right.

LK: This was one that, it was a Sadie Hawkins dance. And it says, "Admit one gal and victim." So by then I had a pretty big crush on my husband so I had invited him to be my date.

AI: And he accepted.

LK: Yes, and so he signed Mr. Kashino. [Laughs] So I... I don't know why I kept all these things, but I had a little box that I kept treasures, you know, so I just hung on to them. So I think our social activities were maybe mostly around dances and meetings or church. And I think that boys really played a lot of sports. My husband played a lot of baseball. And they, that was one thing of big interest to the young boys.

AI: Well now, I, as I understand in about 1943 there was some interest in volunteering for the army. That question had come up and then as I understand it, there was a questionnaire for anyone who also wanted to leave to go out to work or to go out to school. Do you recall much about that questionnaire?

LK: Well, it was a standard form I guess we needed to make application to go out and this was the same form that everybody had to sign. And the pertinent questions which were being criticized was the one where we had to pledge allegiance to the United States, you know, and our loyalty and so forth. Loyalty questions. And so naturally we had to demonstrate our loyalty if they're going to let us out, and so I left in June of '43. So I remember signing that.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.