<Begin Segment 21>

LH: Well, now, who did you turn to then if you... if you were looking for a male role model, what did you do?

FK: Boy, I don't know. Of course he was back home when we came back. And I was six then, but in the years between two-and-a-half and six, I don't know who I did, or what, who I had as my male role model. I think that might have not have been only my case, but it probably was in a lot of cases. And a lot of cases, in concentration camp, when everybody was leaving either to go in the army, or to go to school, or to go work in Chicago, or to work in Pennsylvania or any of those kind of things. I think toward the end of the time there, the only people in the concentration camp were older people, mothers with kids... and there were a lot of the younger men who just weren't there. And I think we lost a lot of our role models. In fact an interesting thing, we... just the other day, the people on the Island were saying -- they're going to do this filming of Snow Falling on Cedars which is that... but -- and they were, they've recruited people from the Island to do a dock scene. And they said, "Well, we shouldn't be in it because there was really no one over fifty that was evacuated."

LH: Is that right?

FK: That's just never dawned on me. But it's probably true because... most of the people, their parents, they were in their twenties and their parents were probably in their fifties. And there was really very little, few, if any, there were very few people, that were probably in their eighties. That were... and that's where they are now, they're all in their seventies and eighties. And there are probably very few people of that age that were evacuated. There might have been a few, but not very many.

LH: Oh, so they're acing themselves out of the movie role.

FK: Yeah, yeah. They're saying, they're saying that we were too old to be marching down the dock...

LH: I see.

FK: Especially from Bainbridge Island, because there was no one that old that was...

LH: So it wouldn't historically be accurate.

FK: Right, yeah. And that just never dawned on me. That most of the people there were, the oldest people that were prob, probably evacuated were somewhere in their late fifties or sixties. And I guess, maybe, in those days you would have thought that was really old. So I don't know, but it's probably true, there were not very many people in their seventies or eighties that were, that were sent to concentration camp. (Narr. note: Most Issei were taken by the FBI earlier)

LH: I see.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.