<Begin Segment 9>

VY: Okay, after Poston I know you said that you went to Hazelton where your mom's sister was?

MK: Oh, my mother's aunt.

VY: Oh, sorry, your mother's aunt was there. So what happened while you were in Hazelton?

MK: I had already graduated in 1944 in camp. And so I went to work for this... all I remember is a bean factory where the beans would come rolling down, and we would have to pick the bad ones. And that made me dizzy and I couldn't handle it. And so they sent me out to Ogden, Utah, from Idaho to Utah, where one of my mother's aunt's daughter's friends' family were situated. So they kind of looked after me for a little bit while I found housework, and I did housework for a Mormon family. And that was the first time away from home.

VY: How long were you there?

MK: Oh, maybe about, almost a year. And then within that time, my mother's aunt's family returned to Washington state, and we wanted to go back to California. And so from Ogden, I returned to Hazelton, and I discussed with my mother that maybe I should go to California with the help of one of the social workers in camp, and see if I could find a rental home. And so we planned it that way, and I met the social worker's friend in California, but it didn't do much to help because I was a little frightened to go out looking for a place to rent. I didn't know how to go about it. But in Oakland I was doing housework. And during that time it was not quite a year, and my mother became ill, and then she passed on so I received a telegram from my sister. And of course I went back to Hazelton, and we had her funeral service there. One of the Buddhist ministers who covered the Ogden, Utah, area, came over to officiate. And then we came back to Seattle -- not back to Seattle -- for the first time, where my mother's family made arrangements for where we would be staying and all that. And so we took that because we didn't have any place to go back in California, even at that time.

VY: So who came to Seattle? Was it you and your siblings?

MK: Yes, all four of us. And in the meantime, I couldn't take care of my stepfather, so a Japanese gentleman from Utah who ran some sort of a hotel or something, he heard about it through the minister. And so he took on the responsibility of taking the stepfather back to Utah and placing him in the home, and he said he'll be well taken care of, so we didn't have to worry.

VY: Did you stay in touch with him after that, with your stepfather?

MK: No.

VY: Did he speak mostly Japanese?

MK: Yes, he was a first generation.

VY: Okay. Is there anything else about that time you want to talk about before we move on to your later life?

MK: Let's see. The camp, well, it was an exciting time for me other than... because we made so many friends from different areas of California. And, of course, graduating high school, going to high school there. Outside of that... oh, when we left camp, we were practically the last family it seems. We were there for at least three and a half years, because we couldn't decide where we could go. And when we finally had to leave, it was very lonely because the barracks, you would expect to see the lights come on during dusk, and there were no lights on other than our room or something. It was a lonely time. And when we got on the train to come to Seattle, I remember disembarking, and I was wearing an overcoat with a little pin on my lapel in the shape of a shield, you know, armor. And it was my temple's logo on that pin, and one of the American soldiers was boarding the train, and he happened to see that seal. And he said, "Oh, are you a WAC?" And I said, "No." [Laughs] And he said, "Oh," and just let it go.

VY: Something about it looked similar?

MK: I guess. Oh, I wanted to become an army nurse.

VY: You did?

MK: I've always envisioned becoming a nurse when I was a child, and so this model, who was modeling the Army Nurse Corps uniform, I was taken by that. And I discussed this after I graduated, in fact, with my mother, while we were still in camp. And I said, "I would like to join the Army Nurse Corps." She said, "No," and that was the end of that.

VY: Why do you think she didn't want you to do that?

MK: Oh, she didn't want me to leave, alone.

VY: She didn't want you to leave her or she didn't want you to be out in the world alone?

MK: I think the latter, because I was only seventeen, and she thought it was too risky.

VY: Did she want you to get married?

MK: Oh, I think she did a some point. After I went to California, I received a simply written note from my mother saying that Mrs. So-and-So's son wants me for his wife, and he was a Japanese American. So I panicked, and I said, "Write back to her and get me out of this any way you can." So I guess she must have written something about taking on the responsibility, and I couldn't be free at this time or something like that. So I got out of that situation. But shortly after that, my mother died, and so I was left with my siblings. And this same woman whose son wanted to marry me earlier, wrote to me and said that she knows of a young man who is in the same situation with younger siblings, and he lost his parents, so why don't we get together? And I thought, oh, that's too much of a responsibility. So I politely said that I had other plans or something, I got out of that jam, too.

VY: It sounds like you had a really good relationship with your mom. And she wanted you to get married, but you didn't want to, not to that particular person, and she respected your wish and she didn't persist.

MK: Well, I was not actually ready for marriage, even then.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2018 Densho. All Rights Reserved.