<Begin Segment 3>

SY: So your earliest memories of childhood go back though, right?

HK: I can go back probably maybe a couple years earlier than that. Something I remember very vividly is in our previous house before we lived in the one on East 14th Street was that what I remember clearly in my mind was that our house was on fire. It burned to the ground in fact, and we had some workers next door who I guess one of the workers was smoking and fell asleep and this cigarette... and those were all wooden frame houses so the houses went up very quickly. So I can remember the flames licking up and my dad, I remember very clearly my dad wanted to go back into the house to get, save stuff, and my mother was pulling him back saying, "Don't go in, don't go in." I thought that was quite an experience just to kind of observe that.

SY: And luckily none of your siblings --

HK: No, no one was actually hurt physically, but obviously it did a lot of economic damage to the family.

SY: And so this happened during the daytime when everybody was out?

HK: No, it was evening, early evening, but I do remember that so that's probably about maybe four years old or so.

SY: And then you don't remember what happened after that whether you had to rebuild?

HK: Well, we did that, but it was a struggle, it very difficult but here again they just scraped and saved and did what they had to do to survive like a lot of other Issei families. They just worked hard and by the sweat of their brow, and they just kept working at it, just persevered.

SY: And do you remember where you were living temporarily then?

HK: No, I actually don't remember. I think we just took some temporary quarters for a while while they were rebuilding.

SY: Amazing, destroying all your possessions then.

HK: Right, most of our stuff was gone, just burned up. It was a difficult time. I was very young to sense the full impact of it, but I know it was a struggle for our family.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.