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BN: So you do your tour and then you were discharged, and did you come then back to Venice?

NK: Yeah, when I finished the army, I came back to stay with my sister again. And that was 1953, and there was also a friend of mine that was in the army with me that came back at the same time. And so we took an apartment together and kind of moved out of my sister's eventually. And I don't know if my sister was happy or what, but she helped me out many, many years. And, in fact, she still lives in West L.A. now, and she's still hobbling along at ninety-plus years.

BN: Yeah, 'cause you lived with her for quite a few years.

NK: Yeah.

BN: And then how did you... you ended up then getting a job you kept for many years, well, not the same job, but for the same company for many years.

NK: Right. Once I got out of the army, I got a job as a... I say it's kind of a flunky job, but I was determined to get somewhere. And so I started working for this company named Transco, and I ended up working for them for thirty-five years, and so they were good to me. I hope they... that company does not exist anymore, but I hope they got enough out of me that I got from them.

BN: What was their business?

NK: The company manufactured antennas and switches for the aircraft, missile, aerospace field. And so I was a production control manager at that company. The company fluctuated, the employees, two hundred to maybe four hundred, up or down depending on the economy at the time.

BN: It was based in West L.A.?

NK: West L.A., yeah. It started out in West L.A., moved to Marina del Rey, and relocated to Camarillo... and eventually that was the downfall of the... aerospace slowed down and almost nonexistent (now).

BN: So did you commute to Camarillo?

NK: I commuted for about a year and a half, two years.

BN: That's a ways. And then how did you meet your wife? We know her side, her story.

NK: [Laughs] I think it was through a mutual friend.

BN: And then what year did you get married again?

NK: Married? 1955, I believe.

BN: And that's the same year you bought this house?

NK: Uh-huh. There again, when I bought this house, I went to see my friend Mr. Obayashi, I should say my father's friend, and he was still up in Washington at the time. And he helped me with a big financial boost and got me started.

BN: Then you mentioned, you alluded to earlier, that you were able to bring over your sister and eventually brother and mother over...

NK: Yeah, I started out by... after I got out of the army, I started working on getting my mother back first. And then once I got her back, I worked out papers for my sister Chiyeko, and then brother Minoru. By then he had two kids, so his wife and two kids were... when they came back. It had to be about 1958 area, somewhere in there.

BN: Then Chiyeko and your mother lived with you for a time?

NK: Yeah. When they first came back, they stayed with me and eventually Chiyeko got married, remarried, I should say.

BN: Did you have, living in, now, Santa Monica area, still close to Venice, West L.A., were you involved in the community center or Japanese school or any of that kind of stuff?

NK: No, I attended some of the functions and so forth, but I was not heavily involved, you might say.

BN: Like your dad?

NK: Yeah... no, nothing like my dad.

BN: What did you think years later when the whole redress campaign starts up? What were your feelings about that?

NK: Well, I was glad that they did something. I think it's much better than just having a plaque. So I may sound greedy, but I think the monetary sum just really, really was appreciated by a lot of people.

BN: And you told me earlier that you had gone to some of the Manzanar reunions and so forth. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

NK: Well, we always went to the -- not always, but went to Las Vegas quite often, and one occasion, it happened to be the week that Manzanar was having a reunion, so saw some of my friends there and they said, "Come on, why don't you come?" And so we started going, and they have it very year, and they keep saying this is the last reunion, but they kept continuing year after year, and it's still going on. So there's some dedicated people that make this thing happen.

BN: I think I've been hearing "last reunion" for about twenty-five years.

NK: Yeah, right. [Laughs]

BN: And you still go to pilgrimages?

NK: Yeah, right. Well, my daughter Judy is... got kind of interested in this relocation camps and pilgrimages, and she's all hepped up on it and dragging us into it now. [Laughs]

BN: This is good, this is good for us. So thank you. I'm not going to go into a lot of the postwar stuff, but is there anything else you'd like to add, any lessons you draw from kind of this, kind of very dramatic periods in your life and experiences that you had?

NK: No, there were a lot of up and downs, but I'm satisfied with what's happened and the way we handled what we did.

BN: Thank you very much.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.