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BN: And then other than when you were born, did the family ever go back to Japan?

KS: No, we never went back to Japan. So then my parents, after my mother came back in 1934, they never went back to Japan.

BN: Did they keep in touch, though, with relatives?

KS: Right. So they kept in touch, and then on my father's side, I told you there were four boys here. And then before the war started, the oldest boy, he had one son and two daughters, I think they finished Hollywood High. So right before the war, that family went back to Japan. So then that family, that was the oldest son, so he brought his wife and three kids to Japan. And then just before the war started, he came back to the U.S. but left the wife and three children in Japan. So the wife and three children were in Japan during the war, and then one of the daughters were killed in the a-bomb. But the father came back to the U.S., and then the way it worked was that before the war, we used to get together, I think it was three times a year, Thanksgiving, New Year's, and Christmas. So we've got four brothers and the children, we'd get together, so we had a real good time. And the main thing I noticed was that was the only time that we ever got to drink soda water. Nowadays we drink soda water every day, but those days, it was only on special occasions like that that you had soda water.

BN: Did your father's other brothers also have children?

KS: Yeah.

BN: Were they closer to your age?

KS: Yeah, they were both older than me and younger than me. So now, finally turned out that two brothers went to Manzanar, one went to Heart Mountain, and then our family went to Jerome and Rohwer.

BN: So they were all in the L.A. area?

KS: Yeah. So then the war split up the family. So before the war, the four brothers used to get together as much as they could. But the war caused the family plan to split up.

BN: Because you were born in Japan, you were technically Issei, you were not a U.S. citizen, right? Was that an issue at all at this point?

KS: No. I knew I was born in Japan, but I didn't realize anything about it. Except after I graduated from high school, I was going to go to college, so I enrolled in the Illinois Institute of Technology. Over there, the way it worked is that -- this is before computers, this is 1952 -- so then in the gym, there would be tables all around the walls. And the table would be the different departments, and on the table would be the IBM cards. So each class had thirty IBM cards or whatever for the number of students for that class. So you'd go up to a table and say, "I want to take that class. Could I have that card?" And when they gave you the card, now you were enrolled in that class. So I went up to the Air Force ROTC class, and I said, "I want to take ROTC. Could I have the freshman ROTC class?" And the guy said, "Are you Japanese?" and I said, "Yeah." Then he said, "Well, graduates of this class or this course in college will become a second lieutenant. And since you're not a U.S. citizen, and you can never become a U.S. citizen, you can't have this class." He said, "Well, you can sit in the back, but you can't get any credit because you can't become an officer." So that's the first time I realized there was a difference between a citizen and a person that can never become a citizen.

BN: Never at that time.

KS: Right.

BN: Okay, we'll get back to that later. But, so when you were a kid, it was not an issue.

KS: Right.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2018 Densho. All Rights Reserved.