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BN: I wanted to get to your work on Tuna Canyon with JANM. You mentioned also JACL, though. Were you active with JACL after the war?

KS: No, I was active in JACL when I lived in Claremont. So then at that time, there's a Japanese American community center in West Covina, so then I was active in that chapter, the San Gabriel Valley Chapter of JACL. So I was doing that, and then my son was doing kendo at the community center. So then I was the president of the community center for one year. So then they have a nice community center down there. I guess all the towns had their own Japanese community center, so they had land, they had property before the war, and that property became part of the freeway, then they got the newer property. But I haven't gone there for several years now.

BN: Did you make your kids go to Japanese language school?

KS: Okay, so we lived in Claremont a long time, but between Claremont... first we lived in Pomona, then we lived in Monterey Park for one year. And at that time, we had our son go to Japanese language school, chuugakko. And then the main thing that concerned his teacher was that he was mispronouncing his name, Japanese name. And then they were going to have a hanashikai, that's when the kids get on the stage and each kid recites a paragraph or so. And the teacher was worried that he's going to mispronounce his Japanese name. So every afternoon at five o'clock, we had to telephone the teacher and my son would pronounce his name over the telephone until he got acceptable. Anyway, so he went there, and then when we lived in Claremont, I think we tried to have our daughter take Japanese language, but they really hated it. So then they went to Japanese language school maybe one or two years. Then afterwards, my son went to UCLA, then he got his PhD at USC. He went to Japan and lived in Japan for three years, so he had to be able to speak Japanese. So I think in Japan, you could make presentations in Japanese, but when it came time to Q&A, I think he used to get fouled up. So he speaks a little bit Japanese.

BN: That's pretty good for a Sansei. And then you mentioned earlier also that when there was this, when the General Dynamics was acquired, that you ended up going to Arizona. About when was this?

KS: Okay, so then we went to Arizona in 1994, and we lived in Tucson. So at that time, we lived in Claremont, so we held on to our house in Claremont and then went down there temporary-like, but still bought a house in Tucson. So when we were in Tucson we got a phone call, then the neighbor... one day when we were in Tucson, we got a phone call from a neighbor in Claremont said that, "There's a fire at your house." So we came, and it looked like there was an electrical short in one of the lamps that we owned. So now we had to fix the house. So at that time, we had asbestos in our ceiling, so we had to hire a contractor to remove the asbestos. So we were working on fixing up the house again, and my wife and I used to drive up from Tucson and work on the house. And then one night when we were down there in Tucson, we got a second phone call that said, "There's a fire at your house," so then we came again, and this time it was arson. So what happened was after the first fire, we removed all the furniture into the garage, and then somebody threw a Molotov cocktail into the garage, so that caused the fire. So after that, we decided that, my wife and I, we decided that we didn't want to go back to Claremont, so we sold our house. So now we didn't have any house, so that when we retired, then we decided to come out to South Bay.

BN: And that was, I think you mentioned, in '98?

KS: '98, yeah.

BN: So you were in Arizona for three, four years?

KS: Yeah, about four and a half years.

BN: Your kids were already grown up.

KS: Yeah, so at that time, my daughter was married and at that time she was living in Hawthorne, but Hawthorne is not that good of a town, so she and her husband, they bought a house in Palos Verdes. So they lived in Hawthorne, had a house in Palos Verdes, and then their daughter was growing up. Then when it was time for the... oh yeah, in 1998, I don't know what year they bought the house, around '98, they said, "Could you live in our house until we get ready to move to Palos Verdes?" So that's when I retired in '98 and then we moved to Palos Verdes into their house. And then when their daughter was ready to start kindergarten, they said, "Okay, you have to move out of our house," so that's when my wife and I bought this house here. And then they moved to Palos Verdes and lived there to go to that school district. And then that daughter now is a senior in UCLA.

BN: But they pretty much grew up in Claremont, then, your kids?

KS: Yeah, our kids grew up in Claremont. And then when they went to, they both went to UCLA, and I think once they left the house to go to UCLA, I think they never came back. They liked UCLA.

BN: Then in retirement, you mentioned you got involved in some volunteer -- actually, before I go to that, I want to just touch on redress a bit. Were you involved at all in redress?

KS: No. So then I lived Claremont at that time, and at that time, we were sort of out in the sticks. So then the only assignment I got was somebody called me up and said, "Hey, your job is to telephone these two people to do such and such." So my job was telephoning about three or four people that lived in Chino and tell 'em what they had to do. Well, I already forgot what that was supposed to be about.

BN: This is for the JACL?

KS: It was either that or the community center or something. People in West Covina and Claremont, they're pretty far from Little Tokyo, so they don't get involved in their activities. And I think some people in Claremont might come to Little Tokyo only once or twice a year or something like that.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2018 Densho. All Rights Reserved.