<Begin Segment 27>

AI: And did you ever talk to them much about what happened during the war years or camp?

LK: No, we, we didn't hardly touch on it. Because as you're, they're growing up it's hard to sit them down and say, "Well, this is what happened to us." But the reason my husband was maybe one of the early ones who started explaining about his situation was because my youngest daughter, she was in 7th grade, I believe, and she came home from school on Pearl Harbor day, on December 7th and she, over dinner, she said, "I hate Pearl Harbor day." And she says, "They all turn around and look at me when the teacher talks about Pearl Harbor." So I said, "Well, you just tell them that your daddy was a war hero." And she says, "Oh, I thought he was, fought for the Japanese army." [Laughs] So then my husband and I looked at each other and said, "Uh-oh, we better talk a little bit more to our children." So you never sit down and talk about it completely. But every once in a while we'd have an opportunity to talk. So then we slowly told our children and I think they picked up a lot of my husband's experiences by -- we participated in a lot of the reunions in Hawaii and from the friends, they've given them little stories about their different escapades.

AI: Oh, so when your daughter was in the 7th grade that, she, that would have been well into the '60s...

LK: Yes.

AI: By that time, the 1960s.

LK: And my older ones were seventeen, eighteen.

AI: And so at that time, even though this was well into the 1960s, your daughter still, and her classmates clearly still had some negative thoughts about the Japanese Americans and had no idea of the role the Japanese Americans had played.

LK: Yeah, because we do have a Japanese face and so they all turned around and look at her, was her idea.

AI: That must have been shocking for you to hear that.

LK: Yes, it was. And so then it made us realize, well, we're not doing a good job with her. We better open up a little bit. And I think typically the Niseis kind of have held their stories and don't talk openly and... let's see, last summer I, there was a little documentary at the Broadway Theater and it was called Beyond the Barbed Wires [Ed. note: Narrator is referring to Beyond Barbed Wire] and this was a new documentary and their children said this was the first time their father had opened up about his experience. And they were shocked. Well, my girls said, "Wow, they're twenty years behind the times." [Laughs] How come they didn't know anything, how come they haven't read and all. Because slowly there has been things written. So my, my girls are, have read a lot about it and know a lot, now, just because of their talks with their father.

AI: Right.

<End Segment 27> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.