<Begin Segment 5>

SY: And what did he do with the business?

FK: Well, as soon as the war broke out, and again we didn't know what was going to happen, again I don't know what was going through my dad's mind but I'm sure it was very traumatic. For me as a young boy about seven and seven, eight, and the following day my friends no longer talked to me and rocks were thrown at me and not only me. I used to go to Ninth Street School which is a grammar school that's still there and it was very... not difficult, it was for a young person trying to understand what's going on. How can your friends that was yesterday and today they're told not to talk to you and to be treated as such and people would drive by and would roll their windows down and slow down and yell at you. A lot of words that as a child you get scared and wonder what did I do? Every evening of course all of the windows were painted black so that if you put the light on that there'd be no light reflecting outside. And everything was hush-hush and everybody talked in whispers wondering what happened. Japan invaded Pearl Harbor and created all this problem and being Japanese and so that was the main topic of the conversation.

SY: Do you think it was worse or it's hard to say but in the area that you lived it was sort of the outskirts of Little Tokyo then right?

FK: Yes, Little Tokyo to me if you ask me my experience in Little Tokyo I had none because I don't recall going there that often. I do recall sometimes that there was a theater in Little Tokyo, I'm trying to think of the name of that theater on First Street. Anyway, I guess occasionally we would go see a movie, the family but that was about it and maybe when there was a wedding we went to eat a Chinese, either at San Kwo Low or Nikko Low or Far East Cafe.

SY: So you were not really considered Little Tokyo, you were really on the outskirts?

FK: No, outskirts, yes.

SY: And so you grew up with not... did you grow up with a lot of Japanese kids?

FK: Yes, in fact there's two stores down there was a restaurant, Fujii, the Fujii family had the restaurant and another store down was a barbershop, the Sakata family. And then another block down there was a Kusumoto family that had a grocery store, and right around the corner on Crocker Street there was a lot of Japanese.

SY: And these were the same kids that you went to school with at Ninth Street?

FK: Yes.

SY: So it was all of you?

FK: All of us had the same experience. I don't recall talking to some of my friends today or lately and asked them, "What was your reaction?" because I never did ask them, I should ask them.

SY: Because if your memory serves you, you were still pretty young, right?

FK: Yes.

SY: Seven or so.

FK: Seven, eight years, yeah.

SY: And were you helping your father and mother at that time?

FK: No, but I recall it was early in the morning and late in the night they used to work. It was very difficult.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.