<Begin Segment 15>

AI: When was that? Where did you go?

KK: 19... well, it was right before the war ended so it must have been 1945 in the summer. Well, I graduated from Tri State so I felt I should strike out on my own. So I went to Sacramento where a group was going to a place called Clarksburg who had a camp set up, farm camp, labor camp so I went there. And my family went to Lompoc, California, and worked on the farm there. And at that time in California around the area there was a lot of discrimination, and they couldn't buy food in the town or anything. They wouldn't sell them food so they had to go to the next town to buy food and stuff. So they were kind of miserable. They wrote to me about all this so I told them to come to Sacramento, people are nicer here. So they came to Sacramento so we worked on the farm there for awhile. Then after that we moved to, back to southern California, and my folks started to farm there. But I think what I want to say was my father going back to work on the farm and everything, I think made him a lot more happier because he was very unhappy in camp. He had nothing to do. And after all he was the bread winner before and all of a sudden he had nothing to do. And I kind of blame myself, us kids too, because we kind of neglected him, and now I think about it, I knew how they felt.

AI: It must have been very hard for your father that he had gone through, as you mentioned earlier, thirty years of hard work then the war, incarceration.

KK: Yes. He was law abiding and he was doing good and all that. It wasn't only the monetary things that was taken away, his pride was taken away.

AI: But through it all he never did intend to leave.

KK: No.

AI: He intended to stay and then it sounds like he did start up the farming again.

KK: Yeah.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.