<Begin Segment 2>

AI: And where were you living when you were born?

LK: Tenth and Washington is just what it says on my birth certificate.

AI: Uh-huh. And what are your earliest memories as a young child?

LK: Oh, just, I don't know. I think the same as everybody else, growing up and going to nursery school. And I know I hated to go to nursery school. I used to hide when the bus driver would come after me. It was very prominent in my mind. But my mother sent us to the nursery school before school and then I went to Pacific School as a youngster first couple years.

[Interruption]

AI: Well, you were just saying that you then went to Pacific School. And, can you tell me a little bit about that, like what you remember of your class. Were there very many other Japanese American kids?

LK: I think there was. Uh-huh, because we lived on East Spruce, Fourteenth and East Spruce. And I remember distinctly some of the people that were at my table. And I think one of them was Dr. Uyeno's wife, Ruth.

AI: Oh, yes.

LK: And one was Daibo Fujii, he's no longer alive. But we used to eat paste together. [Laughs] And it was quite a long ways for walking home from school. I remember one day my, I came home and my parents were not home. They had gone on an errand or something and I was really scared.

AI: Oh, 'cause you had come home by yourself.

LK: By myself and I was in half a day kindergarten so... that impressed me, how scared I was. But I was fine after that.

AI: And so, then when you were a little older, I think you said that your family moved? When was that and why?

LK: When I was about (seven). I think it was (1933) and it, my dad bought a grocery store on, close to where the Seattle Times building is. It would be close to Lake Union. And they had, had bought this run-down business where they didn't do very good at the beginning, but they slowly built it up to a very successful business and my father also bought a second grocery store. So they were -- built up a good business by the time we left.

AI: And so where were you living when, after you purchased the grocery stores? Did you live at one of the store buildings or nearby?

LK: Yes. Upstairs had an apartment and so that was our living quarters, and then kitchen and things were behind the grocery store, in the back of the grocery store.

AI: Oh, right.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.