<Begin Segment 2>

TI: I want to learn a little bit more about Hawaii when you were growing up. So why don't you tell me first when and where you were born.

SK: Born March 19, 1921, so I just made seventy-seven and in Hilo, Hawaii. It's a small plantation camp called Amauulu and I stayed there practically all my life. Born there, grew up there, high school, and for a short period I... what? I graduated in 1939 so I worked at a sake brewery. You know what sake is?

TI: Right, uh-huh.

SK: (From) about, let's see, 1939 until early 1941, then I went to Honolulu to work in the defense project.

TI: Okay. But going back to your childhood, growing up in Hilo, What was it like for you growing up in Hilo?

SK: Well, I knew we didn't have much money. Parents were poor, I knew that, but we weren't deprived of anything. Parents, my mother worked as a (housemaid) for (the) plantation. It was a boarding house and she kept the house there, and my father worked for the plantation, of course. And on his spare time he grew veggies in the garden plot about 200 yards away. And I grew up as a happy child, actually. Although I knew that we were poor, but we were provided (with) whatever things we wanted.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.