<Begin Segment 10>

SY: And the issue of school?

FK: I was not a good student, no. You know why I think, and I blame this on the school system because when we went into camp at Santa Anita I was in the second grade and when they went to school in Rohwer I don't know what happened to third grade, they put me in the fourth grade. And from day one it has been a battle to try to keep up with the rest of the kids.

SY: Really.

FK: I skipped third grade.

SY: And you don't know how, huh?

FK: Well, they looked at me and they said, "Well, you probably belong in second grade but your age says you're in the fourth," so they put me in the fourth grade.

SY: Oh my gosh. Now I was told that the competition among the other --

FK: Oh, those Niseis are yes, you had the smart ones and then you had others like myself.

SY: You didn't have a strong suit?

FK: No, school is something that I blame it again on missing third grade all the way through high school it was a battle. I made it but it was a battle.

SY: Did you study hard?

FK: Well, you know, when you're behind all the time it doesn't matter if you study extra hours, it doesn't matter. And so there's a book report due of course I didn't read the book so the last page you're looking at I would copy word for word and of course the teacher knows that Frank didn't read the book. He's putting words in there that he can't even spell but somehow I managed to finish.

SY: Finish.

FK: Yes, finish is the word. I didn't graduate, I finished school.

SY: Well, it doesn't sound like you were... you had your heart in it.

FK: Well, my heart may have been in it but my brains just couldn't keep up with it. You know, if you get behind there's no... it's like running a relay race and the guy's a hundred yards in front of you and as fast as you run he's just as fast as you, you can't catch up.

SY: I see.

FK: So it took its toll.

SY: So I guess the next question would be do you remember then leaving camp?

FK: We were again about the last ones leaving camp and my dad --

SY: Back up a little, what did your mother... your father had a pretty good position?

FK: Yeah, he had a good position he was paid sixteen dollars a month.

SY: Top wage.

FK: Top wage, my mother was twelve dollars a month and she was a cook in the mess hall. You know as I recall as we're talking now, the camp experience it was a terrible experience I think for the adults, but what I look back and I think that what this had done to the family, the family structure, that most people don't realize that being in a camp for four years in my particular family, my mom working and my dad working, the three of us we would go to mess hall and we would eat with our friends or whoever. And so the eating with the family three times a meal, three meals a day was not there anymore and so I think there must be other people that feel same way that the family closeness was strained. And it had some effect later years as well I'm sure because and then the older people too, they sat with their friends, and there was not a family structure anymore. And I think the war years did change the Nisei and the younger Sanseis thought process of family. And the other thing is that if we were in Japan we would be living in a house with a grandparent, parent, and the children so there's three generations in the house. The Niseis, or the Issei, Shin Isseis that came here, they left their parents for me a Nisei there's only a mother and a child so there's only two generation. We had no third generation, the grandparents' influence. And so I think that too is a big difference in how we care for, or the feeling that we have to take care of our parents. In Japan the structure is you're in the same house and there's three generations so they're taking care of their own. Now the U.S. side you have your parents, I had my parents but I don't have any grandparents and then now so the Niseis feel that they have to take care of or they should take care of their parents. And because of that there's a lot of problems today of the caretaker being totally exhausted caring for their parent, mother or father and because they feel they shouldn't or they can't place their loved ones in a nursing home or anything and they struggle to take care of them at home. And that's tough. It is something that's... and so many families are disrupted, siblings argue, they don't talk to each other anymore, they fall out of the family structure and that's because the Shin Isseis came here without their parents. That's just my opinion.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.