<Begin Segment 11>

ME: You mentioned that your friends would, you guys would play baseball, volleyball... any idea what the topic of conversation was among the adults at that time?

AK: No, I think they were so busy working. And I don't really know if there was any real political discussions or whatever, you know. These were... so many of them were just trying to eke out a living, I think.

ME: Did you ever realize how progressive your family was?

AK: Not really, until later on. I just felt like I was lucky that they were so cordial to everybody. And the pacifism has really influenced me in the later years when I went to a Quaker college and realized, you know, the importance of pacifism. I was very thankful that my parents had even introduced us to the thought of pacifism.

ME: What did they teach you? What did you learn from them?

AK: And my dad would mention Kagawa was a Japanese... Christian, I think he was a minister, whatever, and his, and then he'd mention the various people that were involved in the pacifists. And lived their lives as pacifists, and so, and he would tell us about the Quakers. And, I just was really thankful that he did that. And then when I went to the Quaker college, I realized that I felt that this was part of my life. That was what I wanted, to spend my life doing this to work for peace.

ME: So around that time you realized that that's what...

AK: Uh-huh.

ME: ...you wanted to work for peace?

AK: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.