<Begin Segment 3>

BF: Well, so you were in high school when the war broke out, is that correct?

CK: No, I had just graduated in June of '41 and I was trying to earn some money to go to the university, because we had none. Most of us were just barely making a living. My parents had a dry-cleaning shop right across the street from that wading pool at Green Lake. And there wasn't enough extra money. My brothers, who are older, would go to the cannery, Alaska cannery and make enough to go through school. Since I didn't have that, I had to learn a skill to earn some money and then to go to school.

BF: What were you, what were you working towards? What type of a job?

CK: Oh, to be able to do some clerical work or whatever, but that... when I was in high school, I wanted to take some, what do you call it? Shorthand. And the counselor sat me down and said, "You will never be a secretary." So, she discouraged my taking that.

BF: What did she think you'd be? Or...

CK: I have no idea, when you think about it. But she was very discouraging that we, as Nisei, could ever get a job in the outside world, as a secretary. So I didn't take it there. So then when I got out of high school, I looked around to where I could find the skills to get a job to get, to earn enough money to go to school. And that's where the Pearl Harbor happened, in December of '41.

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