<Begin Segment 13>

SY: Tell me a little bit about what your reaction was when you went back to camp though. When you saw how they were living, what was your reaction?

MK: I went to see my best friend that I used to go to Sunday school with all the time and I don't know if I had changed or she had changed but we had nothing in common anymore. And I just couldn't believe the living conditions we thought our apartment was bad but to have five, six people in one little unit, that was something else. I guess that probably prompted me more than anything else to make sure to try to get them out of there. I think that I felt like my younger brothers were pulling away because the kids all ate... they didn't eat at the same mess hall and my folks had nothing to say about what they were doing because they were always outside playing. In fact George I think was fourteen, fifteen, he was working in the fire department at Heart Mountain. I don't think they had anything to do but the environment itself was not... all the guys were so much older than he was so I know that concerned me.

SY: And Dorothy, you had never really had a relationship with Dorothy, so how was that? What was that like to be reunited with your sister?

MK: I think she was so thankful to have someone to talk to all the time in English because she was pretty much confined with the folks at Heart Mountain and just speaking Japanese all the time. I think we bonded very fast there and she enjoyed going to school and she met a couple people right away so she had some good friends when she went to New York.

SY: So you never really got any resistance from them, the young ones to go with you?

MK: No, they didn't. I think they were happy to go.

SY: And from your perspective, your life in New York was way better being on your own like that than had you --

MK: Had I been in camp, for sure.

SY: Definitely. It was that much of a difference. It's amazing to me and so your... they developed their own friends once they got to New York?

MK: Yes, they did, especially Dorothy, she met a couple of really good friends there.

SY: Did she ever talk to you about this whole adjustment problem with getting back into your family?

MK: No, even today I think she's blocked so much of that from her mind that it's amazing that she turned out the way she did because I don't know, it must have been so hard for her to go through all that. And she of all people, she was on her own to cope with all those things (after) Sachi (left and) not speaking a word of Japanese.

SY: Also so Sachi who had graduated from UCLA who worked in Poston I guess, she must have had a job in Poston while she was there.

MK: Yeah, she was I think in the personnel department or something she was saying.

SY: How did she adjust to New York?

MK: She came to work for uncle (...) right away... in the meantime I got another job after a few months with H.A. Johnson Company which was a baker supply (firm), one of the baker supply houses in New York with headquarters in Boston. But then I became assistant to the president there and so I'd learn so much... oh I had gone also to Merchant and Bankers Secretarial School so I learned shorthand and I wanted to be a good secretary and so I really applied myself. So I went to H.A. Johnson and then called Sachi and she went there too, she went in the finance department though.

SY: So you both managed to get an education on your own?

MK: Well, UCLA was my number one choice but then I (decided) I'm going to be a good secretary. I think the NYA time changed my mind a lot about (that)... I was going to be a school teacher at one time. I had all kinds of thing in mind but I wanted to be a school English gym teacher but then I worked for this wonderful lady at the Department of Employment and I said I want to be like her. And so that's when I went to Merchant and Bankers Secretarial School. Of course nowadays no shorthand, doesn't do any good, don't need it anymore.

SY: But that training was probably really important.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.