<Begin Segment 17>

LH: Well why, why did the Bainbridge Island group go up to Minidoka?

FK: Well, some, my mother said... first of all, they wanted to be with the Seattle group because we were the only group from the Northwest in Manzanar, everybody else was from California. She said that some of the parents were a little concerned also, because the kids from Bainbridge Island were getting into fights with the kids from California. And the California kids were pretty, especially the ones from like Little Tokyo and stuff, were really pretty much street-wise and that kind of stuff and the Bainbridge Island group was a little country bumpkin type kids. And, and the other thing was, that the kids from L.A. were dark and the kids from Bainbridge were light skinned. It must have had something to do with our weather up here. But they were getting into fights and stuff. And they felt like, some of the parents, some of the parents felt like they wanted to get the kids away from this atmosphere. When I talked to some of the kids, at that age who were supposed to be involved in this gang warfare type stuff, they said, "Well, we held our own." He said, he said, "We learned pretty fast." In fact he said, "When we got to Minidoka, we used some of those tactics on some of the other kids." And I thought, "Oh swell!" [Laughs] And it was the day of zoot suits and those kinds of things. But that was one of the reasons that they wanted to get the kids out. The other thing was that they really wanted to be with their friends from Seattle. So I don't know exactly what process they used, but they petitioned to be moved and we were moved to Minidoka. Not all of us went, some of the people from the Island had relatives in California so they chose to stay there, but the majority of us went to Minidoka.

LH: So therefore, you were the first group to enter Manzanar, but you were the last group to enter Minidoka?

FK: Yes, yes. We ended up in the last... what do you call those...? Last... well, it was block, last block. And I remember 44-8-E was where we, our family stayed. Because I, my mother had... embroidered that in some of my clothes, because I kept leaving my clothes everywhere. So I remember, still remember having some things after we came back from concentration camp with 44-8-E on them.

LH: 44-8-E.

FK: So that's why I remember that. It was Block 44, Building 8, Room E.

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