<Begin Segment 20>

SY: So, Harry if we can change subjects a little. Talk more about your own family with your wife and how you met your wife, let's start with that.

HK: As I mentioned earlier I had a church background, so I went to a church conference in the San Bernardino mountains, a place called Forest Home. And met my wife, Jane, Jane is from Watsonville. You know where Watsonville is up there in Santa Cruz area? And so we met there and then eventually got married.

SY: Do you remember when that was when you met her?

HK: Probably early '60s.

SY: So you just moved to Pasadena?

HK: I wasn't there too long, that's true, but it was at a church conference in the San Bernardino mountains where I met Jane. And she was going to San Francisco State and preparing for a nursing career. So after she graduated from SF State as a nursing student, we got married the following June. She graduated in early June and we got married in mid-June, so we've been married for almost fifty years, a long time if you think about it. [Laughs]

SY: So it wasn't through mutual friends you just met each other?

HK: No, it was through friends but it was because we both were attending this church conference.

SY: And I assume her family was also in camp?

HK: Yes, my wife is a Sansei, so her parents, Nisei, they went to Poston for camp.

SY: I see.

HK: And they're from Watsonville, Watsonville area.

SY: And then when did you and Jane start your family?

HK: It took about five years. So she worked as a nurse, public health nurse for L.A. county for several years. And like a lot of young couples, we just tried to establish ourselves professionally, financially, economically, and then eventually we started a family. So she stopped working for the L.A. county public health department and then became a mother and she was at home for a number of years before our boys started school. And once they started school she felt more comfortable about going back to work, so she went back to work and became a school nurse 'cause she had the credentials to be a school nurse. The advantage of that was she could be home when our boys came home from school, which to us was important when they come home there was somebody there. So she was able to be home by three o'clock or so because of her work.

SY: And you had how many sons?

HK: Two, just two. Tim and Reed, and Tim is now... he went to UCLA, he went to Pasadena City College first then to UCLA and he was also a political science major. And worked for the UCLA Alumni Association as a development person, program coordinator, and did that for maybe two or three years and then got a good background in this area. Then the Anderson Graduate School of Management invited him to join their staff in development and administration, and then Anderson developed a real estate center. Anderson has about five or six centers, one of which is the real estate center and it was fairly new. And when that center was established, it's called the Richard S. Ziman Center... he was a big contributor to the center. When that was established, Tim became the executive director for this center. So he's very happy there, he's a very gung ho UCLA Bruin fan, goes to the football games and cheers them on, basketball, et cetera, et cetera. So he loves UCLA so he's in a nice situation because the environment is very conducive to what his interests are.

Our second son, Reed, the one with the two kids, they live in Walnut Creek. He went to Pasadena City College also for a year and then transferred to UC Davis up in northern California, then went to SF State for his master's degree in urban development. So he's now working for an urban development firm in San Francisco but he lives in Walnut Creek with his family and then he takes BART to work, so that worked out pretty well. So he enjoys his work and he seems to be in a nice situation, so my wife and I feel very fortunate that our boys have done well and feel that they're happy in what they do which makes us feel good.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.