<Begin Segment 21>

AI: Well, before our break we had just been talking about the wartime and that your future husband had gone off overseas and that you were having a correspondence. And I was wondering, about how often did you hear from him?

LK: I wrote, you know, like almost every day, but then he would write whenever he had time in between his escapades -- [laughs] -- during basic training and so forth. And, but when he was overseas, I really wrote to him religiously just to keep up his morale, but I think I overwrote because I think he used to share his letters with his friends that didn't get letters.

AI: I bet. Well, and then you were showing me something that you had received from him.

LK: I was, I have a whole box full of letters from him that I've kept over all the years, that I was going through it and I thought, well, this would be something that the present generation probably never heard of or seen, but this is the type of letters I used to get every once in a while. Much of the time it was on stationery that, whatever paper he could find, but like this was called v-mail. And I guess it's a reduced copy, I don't know if it was photostatic copy or what, what method they used. But it isn't like today's Xerox. Very hard to read and reduced very small. And then, naturally all those letters are censored, but every, periodically, I would get this type of a letter. [Shows document]

AI: Oh, that's so tiny.

LK: And I think my kids thought this was real interesting, too.

AI: Yes.

LK: Something of that wartime experience.

AI: Well, speaking of censorship, I was wondering during this time that he was fighting, did you have any idea where he was or in what kind of danger or...

LK: Well, he would say France or Italy along with the date, but I think he was very careful not to say anything, 'cause I've never had any place scratched out.

AI: Right.

LK: So, but he would just write casually, never, never about the war or what was happening or who was killed or...

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.