<Begin Segment 4>

AI: And so as time went on, what did your father decide to do about the farming? Did he prepare for the spring planting?

KK: I have to go back a little bit and say that at that time General DeWitt have signed the zones, where the restricted zone we were near, in fact, half mile from North American Aircraft plant so we were in the restricted zone, which he designated as a red zone. So we had to move out of there and we only had a few days to move out.

AI: What did you do?

KK: So we had to get rid of all our stuff. My father ran around trying sell things, but nobody bought. So finally this unscrupulous guy came over and wanted to buy the whole place for $75. We had no choice because we were running out of time so we sold it to him for 75, all the house, farm equipment, tractors, horses, and barn and whatever and the crop that was coming up, our crop. All for $75.

AI: When was that?

KK: When?

AI: Do you recall the month?

KK: That must have been around January... January or something like that.

AI: And where did you go to live then?

KK: We went to a place in Compton, which was in the yellow zone which was inland a little bit at a friend's place. They had a extra house there so we stayed there.

AI: And you stayed there until evacuation?

KK: Well, no. They then said that people had to move out of the yellow zone so we moved from there to more inland and that's when we had to evacuate, but we were moved three times.

AI: Right.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.