<Begin Segment 6>

AI: And when, when did you first started, start finding out about evacuation? Do you remember how you heard that you were going to have to leave?

AK: I think there were signs on the telephone poles. I don't know. I'm really not too sure. But a lot of this came to the forefront, for us, is because Mr. Kimura lived across the street and I think he had some connection with the Japanese consulate so the FBI was using our place to spy on him or, well, spy or whatever, to check on him. And so we saw that kind of activity going around.

AI: So the FBI came to the apartment building and set up there?

AK: Uh-huh. And then also, my dad was not a suspect, he was a jolly old man that didn't become a suspect. And many of the Issei men were taken away, but my dad wasn't.

AI: Now in your earlier interview, I think you mentioned that you were conscious that your 'Japaneseness' was more prominent to you and that it was scary. Do you remember what it was that you were afraid of?

AK: I don't know. Well, that we're very visible. And that became more -- what would you say -- I became more aware of that with kinds of things that started to happen to me. When people would make comments about my 'Japaneseness.' Like my sister and I were walking down the street, they looked and they said... what did one sailor say, something like, "Bow-legged, cross-eyed..." something. "They're Japs all right." [Laughs] So we both looked at each other and... things like that. But I certainly wasn't sitting there thinking, "I'm going to be evacuated and they're going to, my human rights were going to be violated."

AI: So you really didn't have that in mind, and yet then there came the time where you did have to prepare and you knew that you were going to be...

AK: And it was mainly, "How inconvenient, we're going to have to uproot ourselves and go to..." And by then we were going to... in camp.

AI: I think I remember, from your other interview, that you were describing some of that, thought, so I won't ask you again about that question.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.