<Begin Segment 2>
BN: And they had been in Kohala and then you said in Hana (Maui).
GK: Hana. Then two were born (in Hana), and the rest of us (four) were born in Waialua.
BN: And in each case, your father is assigned to a different temple in each place?
GK: That's right.
BN: And was he in Waialua pretty much continuously from the time you were born 'til the war, then?
GK: Yeah. And after the war, they asked him whether he wanted to go to Japan and he said, no, he wanted to come back to Hawaii because all his children were here. And when he came back, I think in 1945, they told him that... well, he was elected as the bishop of Hongwanji (Temple). So he moved from Waialua to the residence on Fort Street, Pali Highway. And about the same time that the war ended -- yeah, war ended, that's why he came back. Well, war ended for me and I came back. And I was discharged in Schofield Barracks. So I hadn't heard that my father moved. So from Schofield Barracks I went back to Waialua thinking that my home was there. Well, the people down there says, "No, you don't live over here anymore." So I was really surprised.
BN: So, now to go back, do you know about when your father was born?
GK: [Gestures off camera]. She knows.
BN: 1883? So you were born; what were the first things you remember when, growing up in Waialua?
GK: Well, our temple was in Waialua, and next to the temple was a camp named Hachikinya ("eight houses" in Japanese). And I suppose there were eight houses at one time over there. Because there was another camp further up the mountainside, and that camp's name was Shikinya ("four houses"). So I don't know exactly, but during those days, they lived in barracks and they walked to the place of their work, which is the cane field. And that's why they had these Hachikinya and Shikinya.
BN: Did your family live actually at the temple?
GK: Yes. As far as I remember, we lived next to the temple.
BN: Then you're, basically all the community is all plantation workers.
GK: Yeah. And then they had Japanese school. And my father used to run the Japanese school. It had about first to eighth grades, I think.
BN: Was that also at the temple?
GK: Huh?
BN: Was that also, the Japanese school was part of the temple.
GK: Yes, uh-huh. And they have Japanese schoolteachers. One was the Masuda family who lived right next to the temple. And one was the Iinuma family. And Iinuma family lived in the camp, Mill Camp. And one of the things that I remember, it's very interesting, was next to the Mill Camp, there was a Japanese Christian church. And I think the name of the reverend was Fukuda. And I remember one of the sons used to ride a motorcycle. And to me, at that time, that was something great. And his name was Yank Fukuda. But how they ran the Japanese Christian church, church right next to the Japanese community is a wonder.
BN: So what school did you go to?
GK: Oh, I went to the Waialua elementary school, which was about a mile away from my home. And the building is still there. And I used to walk every day, one mile, to the school and back. And it's amazing the way they time that thing, because you go to the school, English school, you came back, and the community, there's nobody home. So the Japanese school was sort of a babysitter until the parents came home from work. It's amazing that they had such a thing. But I heard that before my time, there were many Japanese children, who couldn't commute from faraway places to the schools, the English school and Japanese school. So they had what they call kishikusha (dormitory). And I understand that the children from the faraway places used to live over there as a dormitory.
BN: The Japanese school was, was part of the temple.
GK: Yes, right next to the temple.
BN: So you would walk a mile away to school and then come right back home essentially to attend Japanese school pretty much every day.
GK: Uh-huh.
<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.