Densho Digital Archive - Frank Kitamoto Interview (denshovh-kfrank-01-0020)

<Begin Segment 20>

LH: Okay, Frank. Back in Minidoka, your father was there with your family at that point, right?

FK: He was there for a very short time.

LH: And why was that?

FK: He was, he was still trying to figure out how to get out of, out of concentration camp. They were allowing people to go to either the midwest or back east, but not to go home, if you had a sponsor or if you were going to school and so forth. And, or if you were helping by -- because of the manpower shortage as far as, but -- with agriculture or factories or so forth. And he was -- my mother said he wanted us to move to Denver. And my mother said, "Well, what are you going to be doing in Denver?" And he really didn't know what he was going to be doing. So she said, "Well you know, how you gonna feed the family and stuff if we all go there?" So, she had refused to move to Denver but rather would stay there, because she didn't know what he would do to feed the four kids. And he, finally, decided to go back to Chicago and go to watch repair school... because his dream really was to own his own jewelry store, because he had worked for Mr. Friedlander. He actually had a letter of recommendation from Mr. Friedlander. In fact I found that letter. And I had it once, I showed the slide of it once... and this woman from one of the Jewish history things that's going on in Seattle wanted me to mail her the letter. And I couldn't find it, but I finally found it again, but now I've lost her address. So, I should probably try to figure out who she is and try to get her that letter... because it probably was unusual (then) to have a Japanese person working for a Jewish person and have that person write a letter of recommendation. But, so he went back to Chicago to watch repair school.

LH: Right.

FK: And when he came back after the war, he actually got a loan from Mr. Friedlander to start his own jewelry store.

LH: I see.

FK: So this was a real, things that he was really grateful for, for the Friedlander's to do that. So, he didn't really spend that much time in concentration camp with us. In fact, I don't remember my father very much in the three years that we were there. He was kind of like in and out, there for a little while. And that might have a lot to do with my not feeling like I'm, I was close to him, or not feeling like that I knew very much about him.