<Begin Segment 27>

LH: So, let me take you to first grade...

FK: Okay.

LH: On Bainbridge...

FK: Um...

LH: And when you returned from the war...

FK: Yeah.

LH: Were you apprehensive at all, at all about going to school?

FK: Well I think so. I, I don't, again, I don't have that much recollections of it, other than I remember... I remember we changed our names. I became Frank, which was also, it was, it was my given name, but I never used it before. Before that I was either called Kazu or Yoshikazu, and my sister Yuriko became Lilly, and Hideko became Francis, and Chiseko became Jane. And they were again names that we had on birth certificates because our parents gave us English and Japanese names, but they were names we hadn't used up to then. And then my, surmising now is that our parents thought it was really important that we be as American as we could be. So we were not going to any longer use our Japanese names, but we were going to use our American names.

LH: Well was that a strange adjustment?

FK: I think it was for awhile. You had to get used to being, doing that, but it didn't take very long. I think kids adjust pretty quickly. I must have, I don't remember having any problems as far as...

<End Segment 27> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.