<Begin Segment 15>

BN: And then you're there for a few months, and then what happens after that?

HK: Well, we're there as long as it took for, in my case, my mother to find a job somewhere in the area. Oh, I'd like to mention one thing. One of the big deals that happened for me while we were at the trailer camp was a bunch of us guys said, "Wow, we're back here in L.A., we got to go see the Pacific Ocean." So that was one of the big events that I can remember there. So there was one day that we decided we're gonna walk from the trailer camp to, I think it ended up Redondo Beach, and I think that's maybe six or seven miles or something like that. So we walked all the way, went to the ocean and we got to see the Pacific Ocean for the first time in many years, so that was a big deal for (us at) the Lomita camp.

BN: Good thing you weren't in the valley camp.

HK: What's that?

BN: Good thing you weren't, like, in Burbank or something.

HK: [Laughs] Oh, okay.

BN: Lomita is not far relatively.

HK: Correct. Okay, but eventually my mom, the job that she ended up with as a live-in housekeeper, and for this Caucasian family in Sherman Oaks, so this Sherman Oaks family had a nice house and in the back of the house right next to the garage, was a separate unit that had a full bath and sleeping quarters. So that was where my mother and I spent the next, about year and a half.

BN: So this is like probably the first real bathroom you had had in a few years?

HK: Yeah, correct.

BN: Do you know what the family did, I mean, what the occupation was?

HK: Well, the family (name) was Slaughter. Dang, what did he do?

BN: He obviously must be fairly well-off.

HK: Yeah, it was a nice house, but no, I don't recall what his profession was.

BN: And then your mother did the housekeeping? Did you have to do some things as well?

HK: No. The only thing I can recall is that they had a big side grass yard, so I was the mower, I mowed the lawn. That's the only thing I can recall doing, any yard work.

BN: And then in terms of food, eating, you could prepare your own food?

HK: Yeah, my mother would prepare something, and so when she said, "Time to eat," I would go back into the main house and eat in the kitchen.

BN: But not with the family?

HK: Not with the family.

BN: But were you eating the same food, maybe?

HK: I don't know, whatever my mother was able to scrape up.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.