Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Frank Kitamoto Interview
Narrator: Frank Kitamoto
Interviewer: Lori Hoshino
Location: Bainbridge Island, Washington
Date: April 13, 1998
Densho ID: denshovh-kfrank-01-0019

<Begin Segment 19>

FK: And then there was a time I went to the beauty contest and I was sitting in the front row. And, and in those days they had... oiled gravel, as the big open place where you had...

LH: Was this Miss Minidoka contest?

FK: It probably was, it probably was. I don't know which one it was, but I know they announced the winner, everybody surged forward and trampled me into the gravel. And, and I remember going to the, to the block hospital with my oldest sister. My oldest sister was with me, and them picking this gravel out of me. [Laughs] So I remember things like that. I know one day I, when my father was, was back with us, I remember taking a couple packs of his cigarettes and giving one pack to my cousin. And then, both of us snuck under the barracks. And I guess, we weren't really afraid of ticks and rattlesnakes at that time. We were probably too young to know there was a problem with those. But I smoked the whole pack of cigarettes.

LH: Oh, boy. Again, you're five or six?

FK: Yeah. And I, I really got sick... and I never told my mother why I was sick. In fact, I didn't tell her about it 'til I was in college and she probably didn't even remember about it by then. But, boy, that's, that's when I gave up smoking, when I was five years old. I, [Laughs] there was no way I was going smoke after that. I was oh, so sick! [Laughs]

LH: So you, you never got caught?

FK: Yeah. Never got caught and never did it again... [Laughs] not even one.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.