<Begin Segment 1>

BN: Okay, we're here in Santa Monica on April 23, 2019, we're interviewing Mr. Noboru Kamibayashi at his home in Santa Monica, and shooting the video is Yuka Murakami, and also in the room is Mr. Kamibayashi's daughter, Judy Louff. And with that, we'll begin. As we often do, we wanted to start with, if you could start by telling me about your parents, and I believe your father was the one who first, as an Issei, first came to the U.S. So can you tell us a little about him?

NK: My father, when he came from Japan, he got off at Seattle. One of the industries that the Japanese were involved in was the lumber industry, and my father got a job at the sawmills in the woods of, between Seattle and Tacoma. And there was a railroad siding in that area, for the sawmill, and so that's where I was born. And, in fact, the rest of the siblings were all born in that area called Fairfax.

BN: What was his name and where did he come from in Japan?

NK: My father's name is Hanbei Kamibayashi, and he was from Shiga-ken, Japan, which is near Kyoto. Shiga-ken is better known for its big lake in the center of Japan. So anytime you look at a map of Japan, if you look around and look for a big blotch in the map, that's usually Biwako, and that's the prefecture that my father came from. My mother came from the same village, and so made it easier to explain when people asked, and I just tell them they both came from the same place in Japan. And I had many opportunities to visit and stay at this area, so we may talk about that later.

BN: Do you have any sense of why your father left to come to the United States?

NK: Well, my father was the eldest among the siblings. And as a male, he was, by custom, I guess you might call it... he was expected to take over the household... the Kamibayashi household... and carry on the farming that my grandfather and grandmother did for most of their lives. My father, I don't know, I never asked him, but he was very adventurous, and I don't know if that was the reason, but he decided to go to the United States. And, see, my brother was born... who's the oldest, Minoru... was born in 1917. So my father came to the United States right prior to that period.

BN: Did he go back to Japan to marry your mom, or was she a "picture bride"?

NK: There are many things that, after they're gone, the parents are gone, you think, "Oh, I should have asked them this or asked them that," but that goes into that list of things that I didn't ask them.

BN: Now you mentioned the eldest -- oh, before we go further, we didn't get your mother's name.

NK: Oh, my mother's name was Suga, S-U-G-A. After she came to the United States, I remember a lot of the, if they go to a store, grocery store or something, and the people other than Japanese would see that and they would giggle a little bit and say, "Gee, that sounds just like 'Sugar,'" but her name was Suga.

BN: Did they speak English at all, or was your household a Japanese...

NK: Everything was Japanese. And so when I started grade school, I didn't know any English because my parents spoke Japanese and my siblings, they were educated in Japan, and so they also spoke Japanese. So most of the conversation was in Japanese.

BN: Now, you mentioned your father was working at the sawmill. I know this is largely before you were born, but do you know much about the type of work he did?

NK: Well, he used to tell me that he was a foreman at the sawmill, and the communication between the workers and the boss, you might say, was very, very sketchy because of the Japanese and the English differences. So, my father was kind of picked as a middleman, you might say, and when fights broke out, he had to jump in there, stop the fights, and he did many things that was expected of a foreman. So he used to tell me that he was the foreman at this sawmill, and I'm sure there was many perks that went along with that, but that was his job.

BN: And then, is that to say that that he was foreman over, like, a Japanese crew? When you say middleman, it's kind of like that.

NK: Right. It was because all the workers, who were Japanese, he was using his knowledge of English, which was very little, he was able to get in the position he was at.

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<Begin Segment 2>

BN: And you mentioned you and all your siblings were born in Fairfax, so you must have been there quite a few years.

NK: I tried to relate the timeframe with the age of my brother. My brother is the oldest and I was the youngest, and there was an age difference of eleven years between my brother and I. And so even, I really don't know the exact year my father came to the United States from Japan, but based on the fact that my brother was born eleven years before me, that kind of equates to some time before 1917. And so details beyond that is kind of, very, very vague.

BN: And then you mentioned the oldest brother, you were the youngest, how many total were there?

NK: Well, I had two brothers that died as infants, and even that, I'm not sure. But I believe one of them passed away in the state of Washington, and the other was, passed away when they were sent back to Japan. So, there was... I had three sisters. I was the youngest. I had three elder sisters, and counting the two brothers that were infants, that gave a total of... let's see, three girls, so there's seven of us, including myself.

BN: Of which, then, five were kind of surviving?

NK: Actually, the two brothers that passed away, naturally, we knew very little about except that I knew there was two brothers. So there was four boys and three girls amongst the siblings.

BN: Now you mentioned that, alluded to before that your mother took the first four eldest to Japan?

NK: Well, actually, the last two kids were myself and my sister right above me, her name was Kazuye. And all the other siblings were automatically -- I say automatically -- but they were sent to Japan. Because in Japan, my grandmother and grandfather were in the village in Shiga-ken, and so the kids that were sent to Japan, they stayed with, were raised by my grandmother. And they, except for Kazuye and myself, the two of us, all the other siblings were sent to Japan and raised by my grandmother and also educated there in Japan. And one of the main reasons for that was, working in the sawmill, there was no schoolhouse, you might say, in the middle of the forest because all we have is trees, and the people cut trees down and hauled it away. So my brothers and sisters were, you might consider Kibei Niseis because they were educated there and then eventually came back to the United States.

BN: So really, as you're growing up as a young child, even though you had the siblings, it was really just you and Kazuye, really.

NK: Kazuye, right.

BN: And then later, some of them came back, of course, but then you were small. We should, even though we have it in writing, we should note, when were you born?

NK: I was born June 23, 1930.

BN: And Kazuye was how much older?

NK: [Narr. note: Two years older.] Well, my oldest brother was eleven years older than I was, and everything was based on, younger than my brother, and I related my timeframe to the age of my brother.

BN: Now, in your memoir, you mention a story about how you were almost adopted by a Obayashi family.

NK: Yes, that's true.

BN: Can you tell that story?

NK: Well, when my father was working at the sawmill in Washington, one of his best friends from Shiga-ken was... had a hotel business in Tacoma. And my father relied on Mr. Obayashi for many things besides loans and companionship and so forth. When the depression came in the '30s, my father... the sawmills were closing down, and so he decided to move down south to California and try something new, because the depression was killing the sawmill business. Once we were down in California, Mr. and Mrs. Obayashi had no children, and so being good friends as they were, Mr. Obayashi and his wife asked my parents if they could have me as the adopted child because they didn't have any children, and they wanted me to be a person that would take over the Obayashi name and continue on. Well, I didn't have no choice in this, of course, but the outcome was obvious, I have remained a Kamibayashi. But in a way, I was very, very touched by the Obayashi family, knowing that they had an interest in me.

BN: And they recur a couple more times later in your life, too.

NK: Right. They didn't give up, they kept trying, but as I grew older, I got more attached to my family, so the exchange did not take place.

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<Begin Segment 3>

BN: And then you mentioned moving to California. Could you talk a bit about that now, how your father, well, the whole family comes to L.A.?

NK: Yes. During that period, in 1930 when I was born, I was born, naturally, in the state of Washington, and as soon as I was born, I like to say 1931 to '32, my father gave up his job at the sawmill and decided to move down to Los Angeles area. And in Los Angeles area, I don't know if it was word of mouth, but he ended up in Venice, California, and with the money they had, he ended up with a Ford truck that he used to haul vegetables from the farm to the wholesale market in downtown Los Angeles. And this is in that period between 1931 and 1935. And from 1935, he decided to start his own farm. Back in those days, the main crop was celery, and everybody back east and everywhere wanted celery. And so all the farmers in the Venice area grew celery once a year and it was shipped to various places throughout the United States, and it was a very well-known place for celery.

BN: So what are your first memories, which presumably would be in Venice?

NK: Well, when my father started farming, naturally, anybody that can do any hard labor were recruited out of the family, so that included my father and my mother. And at that time, my siblings, brother and sisters, still in Japan getting educated, so there was just the two, father and mother. And during the year when the busy season came, there was a lot of Hispanic workers that were available then, so they used to pay him, as I remember, like twenty-five cents an hour, which was the, almost a foreman's wages. And so the workers were getting anywhere from a nickel to a dime an hour. And I don't know if my parents were kidding me or not, but I remember them telling me stories of workers that worked for them.

BN: And then a few years later, can you tell me about going with your mother to Japan? Your sister, too, right?

NK: Oh, one of the things that stick to my mind is, in 1935, at that time at Venice, the family consisted of my father, my mother, and my sister Kazuye who was two years older than I was. And the four of us, we lived in Venice, California. I don't know if there was a reason, but my mother took myself and my sister, Kazuye, and the three of us went to Japan to the old homestead in Shiga-ken. And as it turns out, my next oldest sister Shizuye, who is married now... got married later to Kenso Kiyohiro... the four of us -- my mother and Shizuye and Kazuye and myself the four of us returned from Japan in 1935, the summer of 1935. And that was the first of the siblings that were sent to Japan that came back to the United States. And that happened in 1935, and it was a one-month vacation for myself and my sister, Kazuye.

BN: Do you remember much about meeting, because there were two other siblings in Japan, too, who stayed there, do you remember much? I mean, you were only five, I guess, but about meeting these brothers and sisters for the very first time?

NK: Yes. Surprisingly, when I went back to Japan in 1935, I remember my aunts and my uncles, and I had my sister Shizuye, who came back to the United States with me, was there, along with my oldest sister Chiyeko, and my oldest brother Minoru. And naturally, the two siblings passed away, I didn't know that they died before I even was born. So I had very, very sketchy memories of them except for what my parents and my siblings had told me about it.

BN: And then when you came back to Venice, you were about the age of having to start going to school, so can you tell me a little about your memories of going to school and then to Japanese school?

NK: Yes. In 1935, we came back from Japan, and again, it was the beginning of my school days, and at five years old, the local high school, the grade school and high school was Venice High School and Machado grammar school. I went to, when I started the grammar school, I had no knowledge of English, because at home, Japanese was the only thing spoken. And so even my first day at school, when they did roll call, the teacher called my name out and said, "Noboru Kamibayashi," she didn't say it that good, but it was enough to know that they are trying to call me out. But when I heard that Noboru Kamibayashi, I blurted out to the teacher that, "That is not my name." I tell them, "My name is Boya," because in the family, I was the last of the siblings, and they just... that name was given to me by an elder -- might have been my mother and father -- because I was the youngest, they called it Boya, which meant like a junior or a little baby. And that's what I thought my name was, and so my teacher had to tell me at the first day of school that, "No, your name is not Boya. Your name is Noboru Kamibayashi."

BN: What name did your friends, what did your friends call you when you were a child?

NK: Going through grammar school, I was used to the name Boya more than anything, because it's something, I didn't go around telling everybody that that's not my name. But that just stuck with me.

BN: Even friends?

NK: Yes, my friends, they all call me that.

BN: Even today? [Laughs]

NK: No. There's very few, that's a name that just sticks with a person that's maybe five or six years or younger. And as they grow up as a teenager and older, naturally they don't use that anymore, and it's kind of embarrassing when a person that's twenty, thirty years old, being called Boya, because people would kind of put their hand to their mouth and start giggling.

Off camera: Doesn't Mrs. Shishido still call you Boya?

NK: Hmm?

Off camera; Doesn't Mrs. Shishido still call you Boya?

NK: Yeah, there's a group of people that... in the local area that went to school -- Japanese school or English school --and these people that I'm talking about are, like, past ninety years old, and they look at me and they say, "Oh, Boya." I mean, saying that to an eighty-nine year old person is kind of embarrassing. But on the other hand, it just brings back memories of eighty, ninety years, and it's good to know that people remember me for that length of time.

BN: And I guess from their perspective, you'll always be a few years younger from their perspective. That's funny. Were a lot of your friends and people you went to school with, was there a fairly substantial Japanese community (in that area)?

NK: Yes. The Venice area had thrived with Japanese farmers growing celery, and it was all being farmed. There were people who had mostly leased theland and grow their vegetables. Celery was the main crop, but between crops (during the year), they would grow things like string beans or cabbage or whatever else. It was like a guessing game for the farmers because if they picked the right item that there's a scarcity of at the time, then they would get good money and they would hit the jackpot. But if everybody happened to grow the same thing, the market got flooded with it and prices dropped, and so it would become a bad year.

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<Begin Segment 4>

BN: Before the war, did you have to help on the farm at all?

NK: Typically, most of the farmers, naturally they have boys and girls, and it varied with the family, but with most kids that were, say, ten, eleven years or older, were asked by their father or their parents to help out in the field. And that was true with our family. My sister that came back from Japan, she had to be about thirteen or fourteen at the time, she was recruited as an adult, and had to go out in the fields and do the various chores in the farm. One exception to that rule is that there was some people that were, I would say, not privileged, but spoiled is the better word, and that was me. And although I was close to the age of going out and doing some work, I got away without going out in the field. My parents were very lenient in that way, but on the other hand, I think back now, and I should have been out there working, not playing.

BN: What kinds of things did you do when you were playing?

NK: Well, most farmers, they had many kids, and so they didn't get the luxuries that I had. Because if I wanted a bicycle, I would nag my father to death and then he'd finally give in and buy me a bicycle. And I always had the latest design, and even now, watching TV, you see some of these shows where the "American Pickers" that go looking for old motorcycles and bicycles, and at this age of close to ninety years old, I see some bicycles that I used to have my father buy me, seventy, eighty years ago. And it was a very... my father was exceptional in that he gave in and bought me all these things.

BN: Do you think it was partially because you were the youngest?

NK: That had something to do with it. And I was good at nagging.

BN: Did you have to go to Japanese school?

NK: Oh, that said, all the farmers, when they got together and they started a Japanese school to teach us Niseis the Japanese language, and so they... normally they started when they're in grade school, and they went through the whole process until they graduated at what they considered high school, I believe. And I would say eighty percent of the farmers sent their kids to school, Japanese school. But this was usually... the American school was... started from eight o'clock to three o'clock, and then from four o'clock, between three and four o'clock, the Japanese school had a bus that they bought, and they went around the Venice area and picked up the kids and took them to the Japanese school, which was on Jefferson Boulevard near the Home Depot, which is in existence right now. And so in my case, when I was in the grammar school, after three o'clock, I got on the bus and went to Japanese school. And most of the other areas, the bus also went and picked up all the people that were interested in getting their kids educated in Japanese. So for us, I envied the American kids that went to school, and at three o'clock, they just went home and played, whatever they wanted to do. But yet, we were kind of in a position where our hands were tied, and it was a routine that you don't ditch school because, if you do, your parents would find out immediately, and that was a no-no.

BN: Did you learn much Japanese?

NK: Well, I could have learned much more if I studied, but I was not very good at that. So I got along, and we still spoke Japanese at home, so that helped me get along. But the classes were kind of set up by book numbers, number one through twelve, and then naturally, starting out with one, and each year you progress one book. And I must have gone through maybe books 5, about book 5, and I was getting to a point where we're just learning some Chinese characters. But that's when the war broke out and it kind of ended there.

BN: So were the books corresponding, more or less, to grade?

NK: Yes, grade level you might say. So naturally it started out with book number 1, which is like the first grade, and it's very, very basic things that they learned from that.

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<Begin Segment 5>

BN: Now, can you tell me about your oldest brother, who I guess, returns...

NK: My brother Minoru, when he was still... born in Washington state... was sent back to Japan to live with my grandmother and he and my sisters Chiyeko and Shiz, all three were taken care of by my grandmother. And she existed by the monthly checks that my father would send to Japan so his parents could survive and raise my siblings Minoru and Chiyeko. [Narr. note: The three siblings were cared for by my grandmother until 1935 when Shizuye returned to the U.S.]

BN: But then he comes back to join you before the war?

NK: Yes, during the war, about 1938, my brother graduated high school in Japan. And right around that period, there's rumbling of the Manchurian War, and everything was kind of turning military. And so the parents that sent their kid to Japan for education were getting kind of edgy, and my father was in the same boat. And he had two purposes, he needed a person to work on the farm, and he didn't want his son to get drafted. And so in 1938, after Minoru graduated high school, he came back to Venice to join the family. And so now we had my father and mother, and Minoru, my brother, and Shizuye that came back from Japan a year or two earlier, and myself and Kazuye. So the family was getting heavier on the United States side versus Japan side. But that's when my brother Minoru arrived from Japan to the United States.

BN: How did you get along with the two older ones who came from Japan? You're fairly far apart in age, too.

NK: Correct.

BN: Did you become fairly close to them?

NK: My sister Chieko, in fact, all of my sisters, they treated me as a little boy, and so I had no problem with that. But my brother, being the age difference there, eleven years, left us with almost nothing in common, you might say, except we knew we were brothers. And so, in fact, he was almost to a point where when we're living in the farm, he would say, call me a brat, you might say, because he was the oldest and I would never listen to what he would say. We lived through it.

BN: Now, before we get to the war years, I wanted to ask you about your father, because I think you had written that he was kind of active in the community with different things, which possibly contributed to his being interned. Can you talk a little bit about some of the things he did in the community?

NK: Okay. When the war broke out in 1941, my father was not one of those that were picked up by the FBI on Sunday. He was picked up on Monday, a day later. And at the time, naturally, we had no idea what was going on, but my father, before the war started -- when I say "war," I'm speaking of the Second World War -- he was very active in the community, Japanese community, like the Japanese school, the judo club, the Farmer's Association and so forth. In fact, one year, in 1940, he went back to Japan to celebrate some big celebration they're having in Japan. And because of these ties with these organizations, that caused the FBI to get suspicious of him and he was taken in on Monday, the day after Pearl Harbor.

BN: And the 1940 event in Japan was a pretty big thing, the 2600th anniversary.

NK: Yeah, right.

BN: Did he go by himself? Or not by himself, but no other members of the family went?

NK: No, he went by himself. I begged him to take me along so I could get out of school, but it didn't work and he went alone. It was a big celebration, and he was very proud of the fact that he would be invited, he really enjoyed himself.

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<Begin Segment 6>

BN: Do you have any memories of December 7th, hearing about the war beginning?

NK: Yeah. Sunday, December 7th, we were living in Venice on Redwood Avenue. And just prior to that day, the army were... set up anti-aircraft batteries down the street from us, and I see these trucks hauling these big artillery equipment, you might say. I didn't think much of it, but on Sunday when I see these... more trucks going up and down, we finally realized that that's what they were, they were anti-aircraft getting ready. So it seems, based on that, the United States Army knew something was going to happen, and naturally on December 7th, it did happen. The next day was school, and I went to school, but it was a very, very hostile feeling I had from my friends, the friends that yesterday were good friends, and the next day, they were not my friends.

BN: Then how did you find out about your father having been taken?

NK: Well, when I went to school and then I came home, that's on Monday, my mother told me that they took my father away. And my mother and brother were busy taking our photo albums, and in the backyard, built a bonfire and were burning up all the photographs. Because the thinking was that if they see these photographs, it's going to incriminate him, so they were getting rid of evidence, you might say. But I don't think that would have made any difference, now that the time has passed.

BN: And then were you able to communicate with him at all?

NK: Well, the first few days, we had no idea where he was. I believe the first, one of early places... the jail that he was taken to was the L.A. County Jail, and then he moved from there to the Terminal Island. They had a prison on Terminal Island, and I think there was a federal prison. And each time we hear that there was a movement of enemy aliens, which they were considered enemy aliens at that period, we would all get in the car and dash down. (I remember...) I don't know what day it was, but within that first week there, we all went down to Terminal Island and parked ourselves right outside the fence, waiting for a glimpse of them. And then one evening, we saw these gates open, and they were all loaded onto buses. There must have been four or five buses, and we didn't know where he was at first. But the buses were taking the prisoners down to downtown Los Angeles to the train depot to ship them out of state. But as the buses headed towards the Union Station, my father got to the back window and we saw clearly that it was him, and we waved at him. That was the closest we got to seeing him since the war started.

BN: Did he see you?

NK: Pardon?

BN: Did he see you?

NK: Yes, yes. We got up right behind the bus and we were able to wave at each other.

BN: Now, what's happening with the farm during this time?

NK: Well, the farm was, we had some Hispanic workers, and one was almost a steady worker because we had enough work for one person to work the year round. And the equipment, farming equipment, and the crop that was out there was, it was taken over by this Hispanic man called Ramon. And he didn't have any money, so I don't know the details because my brother was handling all that. But I would say that we just walked away from what we had, and had to leave it there. And people like Ramon had a bonanza.

BN: The farm was, the land was leased, right?

NK: Yes, my father leased the land.

BN: So did Ramon just, presumably, take over the farm?

NK: Well, it's hard to know exactly what happened, because the land itself was owned by a Japanese person, an Issei. And he had property all over the place, and one of them that my father leased. And I don't know what happened between Ramon and the other landowners.

BN: But when you came back, the family didn't, never went back to the farm?

NK: No. When everything settled down after the war ended, you might say we kind of washed our hands of farming, and there was nothing recovered from the farming.

BN: What is that area today, over where the family farmed?

NK: The farm is, if you're familiar with the Venice area, on Washington Boulevard, there's a Costco. And that one block, and block and a half south of Washington Boulevard and Glencoe, there's a patch of land that my father leased, and it is now a multi-level apartment houses there. My father was on the farthest north of all the ranchers, and then south of Washington Boulevard was practically all Japanese farmers.

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<Begin Segment 7>

BN: Do you remember how you found out that you were going to have to leave and that the family was going to have to be taken away?

NK: Oh, well, there was posters on the telephone poles saying that we had to be evacuated, and a lot of it was word of mouth. The older Niseis read the signs and relayed all the information to the Isseis, and word got around.

BN: What do you remember about actually leaving and going on to Manzanar?

NK: Well, the best I can remember, it was April of 1942 that we had to... got the notice that our area... we were to assemble at a certain place and get on the bus. They didn't tell us where we were going. Maybe they did, but I was too young to know any better. But it was, our gathering point was at Venice Boulevard and Lincoln Boulevard in Venice. There were many buses that came there, and we all got on the bus, and it was a convoy from that place up to Manzanar. And so except for rest stops (now and then), the bus went directly from this spot in Venice to Manzanar.

BN: Who in your family actually went?

NK: Okay, at Venice, my father was taken into, by the FBI, so he was no longer with us.

BN: He's somewhere, interned somewhere else at this point.

NK: Well, we didn't know where he was at the time, but I believe one of the first areas that the enemy aliens were gathered was Fort Missoula, Montana. And we didn't know it at the time, but I don't know how much longer it was after that, that we found out where he was. But at Manzanar, my mother, my brother, Minoru, and my sister Shizuye had just gotten married before we came into camp. So it was like a honeymoon for them to go in from everyday life to Manzanar, and then there's Kazuye and myself. And we were, except for Shizuye, there was four of us that ended up in Manzanar.

BN: Were you all in one room?

NK: Yes. When we first got there, as we got off the bus, they assigned the rooms to the families. And depending on how big a family it was, they assigned a room to you. And so in our case, there was four people, so there was a room that was assigned for us four.

BN: Was it the smallest room or the middle? There were three sizes.

NK: Yeah, I don't remember exactly, but we were in the center area, and it was (not) the smaller size room. Because I remember there was one family that had an adult brother, that they took up almost half a barrack, I remember.

BN: And then what block were you in?

NK: We were in Block 18, and Barrack 5, Apartment 2.

BN: Were other people in Block 18 from the same area?

NK: Yes. As the bus came to, got into Manzanar, they drove the truck right up to the block where you're going to get off. And then as you got off, it said, they pointed to us to go to, which apartment to go to. And there had to be a lot of refinements made to that particular arrangement, but that was a basic rule was that you got off the bus, and try this for size, you might say. And if it was too small for a family, they would find another apartment or take two apartments in a row.

BN: So the people from Venice were kind of in the same area?

NK: Yes. I would say our block was, at the time, was mostly from Venice or Santa Monica.

BN: So a lot of your friends were nearby.

NK: So we got to know everybody eventually, but even when we first got in, I would say we knew eighty percent of the people.

BN: What happened to Shizuye and her husband? Where did they go?

NK: Okay, they were assigned an apartment in the same block as us, but because they had the mother-in-law and his brother and so forth, the apartment was either too small or too big, and so they had to... they requested another arrangement. And what happened was they ended up in Block 36, which is the last block in the camp. And that was kind of at diagonals to the camp and work, Block 18 was at one end, and Block 36 was at the northern end. And they, my sister and her husband Kenso Kiyohiro, moved to Block 36, so it kind of broke our family up. But my sister's mother-in-law was very happy with the arrangement.

BN: Now at Manzanar, you started school, right? (What grade were you in?)

NK: After we got, things settled down a little bit, they had a attempt to start the school. And I was just getting into the seventh grade, I believe. So just getting out of grammar school... sixth grade and going into seventh grade. (There) was kind of a voluntary... I don't think attendance was kept that well, but I do remember going to a class and it was very, very informal. This is before they got the high school organized (at the bottomg end of the...) the high school, which was near the highway.

BN: I always ask people this because I'm interested, but what were the bathrooms like as you recall?

NK: Well, the bathrooms, each block had an apartment, but in the center, each had a men's restroom and a women's restroom. And I remember the toilet seats were, like you see in the old army pictures, and there were no walls or anything separating one seat from the other, and it was very, very humiliating. It was hard to get used to, but as time went along, everything worked out.

BN: What about the mess hall arrangement?

NK: Yes, there was one mess hall for each block, and also a laundry room. And there was also one barrack set aside for a recreation room, and that was kind of left up to each block to designate what they wanted to do with it, I believe. But it was a place that we could go when the weather was bad.

BN: Was your recreation room used for anything in particular? I mean, some of them became churches or clubhouses for Boy Scouts or whatever.

NK: Well, they had, as time went along, they organized a Boy Scout troop. And, in, fact, my brother-in-law, Kenso Kiyohiro, was one of the founders of the Boy Scout troop in Manzanar, and he enjoyed doing that. He was involved in that before he went into camp, so he kind of carried on with what he was doing when the war started.

BN: Were you in the Boy Scouts?

NK: Well, I was right at the age of, I could almost join but was not old enough. You had to be twelve years old to join, and it was a matter of two or three months I was short of time, so I had to wait before I could join.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 8>

BN: Now, with your father, were you able to, at some point now start writing, exchanging letters and so on?

NK As far as I can remember, I believe there was some communication from my father to my mother when we were at Manzanar, and that's how we found out where he was at, Missoula, Montana. And that's when correspondence started again. One thing I do remember is letters were all censored, and so you'd have a letter that you'd be reading, all of a sudden there's a blank spot that they cut out. And this was typical of the enemy alien camps that existed. But Missoula, Montana, was one of the first camps that they went to. He also just went from place to place in the United States, and the next one of the camps was at Bismarck, North Dakota. There was... from there... to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and then to Livingston, Louisiana, and then to Santa Fe, New Mexico. And we were supposed to join up with my father and the rest of the family at Manzanar. We were supposed to go to Crystal City (Texas), because we had (also) applied for the prisoner exchange on the Gripsholm. But as it turned out, all those days fell through, and so my father ended up in Santa Fe. And after finding out that he had cancer, they released him to join the rest of the family that was in Manzanar. So this was early '43, probably, that he joined us and we went toTule Lake.

BN: Did he come before or after the "loyalty questionnaire"?

NK: That was going around during that period. So naturally he had many reasons to return to Japan, and one is his mother was still there. His daughter, my sister Chiyeko, was still in Japan. He had accumulated what he could in land and bamboo forest in Japan to live off of. And when the "no-no" questionnaire came out, there was no question on his part. He was going back to Japan.

BN: Was the family in touch with Chiyeko, the sister that was in Japan at that time?

NK: I want to think that we got a letter through the Red Cross, but that area is so vague for me, that I would say no, that we had no correspondence.

BN: What was... you're eleven, twelve, was your reaction to your father returning? How did he seem to you?

NK: Well, in my eleven, twelve years old, when we were in Venice, my father and mother naturally were out in the field from morning 'til night, you might say, and so we ate dinner together. But it was not a typical family life like you would think of it today. Because even my family, as we were raising the kids, my wife took care of the kids and I would see them at night, but we had weekends and things like that. But my timing in 1941... '42, I had no such close contact with my father. And so it was almost like a, more like a brother than a father. It was just the way life was in those days.

BN: And what were your feelings about possibly having to go to Japan?

NK: Well, for me, I was kind of happy thinking that I'd see my sister. Surprisingly, I remembered quite a few of the details of the home in Shiga-ken.

BN: From when you were there when you were five?

NK: Right, on that vacation, one-month vacation that we took in 1935. So I had some good memories. And I was kind of happy thinking that there was a place for us to go and there'd be a place for us to stay.

BN: You mentioned your father had cancer. How was he affected by that?

NK: Back in, during the war, I had never heard of the word "cancer." But in the shuffling of my father from camp to camp, when he was at Livingston, Louisiana, he went to the hospital and they diagnosed that he had cancer of the rectum. And they, that he had a cancer, the authorities let my mother and my brother visit him from Manzanar. They had to go to Louisiana to see how my father was. This had to be in 1942, latter part of '42. But anyway, they drive across the United States. I was telling my daughter that, come to think of it, it was kind of a scary thing for them -- my brother, who was a Kibei from Japan, that wasn't very strong with his English, and my mother who spoke no English at all. (They would) get on the train and bus and travel from one end of the United States to Louisiana. But somehow they made it and saw my father, and they came all the way back. Because my father had cancer, several months later, they allowed him to return to Manzanar to join us. This is right before the segregation in the camps happened. So soon after he came to Manzanar, we all were shipped to Tule Lake and we stayed in one apartment in Tule Lake.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 9>

BN: Before we go to Tule Lake, at Manzanar, I wanted to ask you about if you were involved in other kinds of activities, sports or, you mentioned you were a little too young for the Boy Scouts.

NK: Well, at the age of twelve years old, all you think about is playing. But in the meantime, school started, and I was in the seventh grade, remember, I was going to junior high school at the camp. And by then, the school system was very well organized. (They had) all these Caucasian teachers that were hired to teach us in the camp. And I remember that we had a music teacher named Frizzell who is pretty well-known now. And I was in his class a few times for music appreciation and so forth. But a twelve-year-old trying to learn music, it wasn't exactly my cup of tea, but I lived through it.

BN: This is (Lou) Frizzell?

NK: Yes, yes.

BN: I think your friend made a film about him, Brian Maeda?

NK: Yeah, Brian Maeda.

BN: You hear stories about kids being able to leave camp and hike and fish in camp. Were you one of those who snuck out?

NK: Each... not every block, but depending where you came from, you all had these groups of kids that formed groups. We had a, kind of a group of teenagers in our area, and I remember that, as a kind of a recreational break, somebody organized (a group) to go for a hike up Alabama Hills. And I don't know if you're familiar with Manzanar, but on the south end was a... of the Owens Valley... is Alabama Hills, something you'd look at every day but you'd wonder what's on the other side. So they organized a one-day hike that you would go to Alabama Hills and then come back. I was very interested in that, so I joined that group, and we were all teenagers, and we started out early in the morning, and was warned of all the snakes and be careful of this, and, "Don't fall off the rocks," and so forth. (They) talked about the snakes, and yet, when you start walking, you just kind of doze off and keep your legs moving and go up the hill. But this one guy screamed at the top of his lungs, and everybody looked, turned around and looked, and sure enough, there was a rattlesnake in the path. But nobody got bit and we made it back to the camp okay. But that was kind of an exciting outing for us compared to waking up every morning and looking out to see the mountain and then going back and doing what you have to do. There was also the same group of people that said, "We're going to go fishing." And so there's many streams that went through Manzanar, and naturally, in camp, with all the people out there, there was no fish to be seen in the camp. But there's all the people that kind of chaperoned us and took us in, we went to George Creek, which is on the south side of camp, and did some fishing. And we had no equipment, that was my first fishing in fresh water, you might say. I tried my luck, but it was no good. I didn't even smell any fish. But the guy that kind of organized it had some experience, so he walked a mile up more and got into a nice quiet spot and he caught a trout. And that's the first time I heard of a fish being caught from Manzanar.

BN: Anything else about Manzanar before we move on? One thing I didn't ask was if your mother or brother had jobs.

NK: My mother had no jobs. My brother was a G-man. In other words, they had trucks that went from block to block picking up trash, and he was one of the guys on the back of the truck picking up the trash and throwing it on the truck, and so he was a G-man. My sisters did not work, so my brother was the only one that had a job at sixteen dollars an hour.

BN: And you and Kazuye were too young?

NK: Yeah, we were much too young. Oh, I take that back. At Manzanar, they had a camouflage manufacturing site, and a friend of mine in the same block said... we were talking, and he says, "Hey, let's go see if we can get a job at the camouflage net place." And so we were only twelve years old at that time, and naturally you had to be much older than that. But my friend was a good talker, and so he went down there and he talked these people into hiring me and my friend. And so we did about one day's work, and that was the end of our job.

BN: Was that your choice or their choice?

NK: It was their choice.

[Interruption]

BN: And yeah, I wanted to ask about a bicycle.

NK: Oh, yeah. When the evacuation notice came out in early 1942, one thing that the government offered was to pick a site and store your household goods. And so we had a few suitcases and boxes and so forth, that we packed up and we took it to the Venice Japanese School, and they had a building that they put up in 1941, '40 or '41, and all the Venice local people took whatever they wanted to maintain over to that area, and they made a storage building. In that, amongst the things that were there... eventually when they... things settled down, they let us bring in what was stored there to the camp. And amongst the things were my bicycle. And having a bicycle was one thing, but getting parts for it was very, very difficult. And one of the main essentials of the bicycle was the tire, which used rubber for the tubes and so forth, and made it very, very difficult to get the bicycle running. But by using the Sears catalog and Montgomery Ward catalog, I was able to get the tires for the bicycle, and so I was one of the few people that had a bicycle to ride in camp. In fact, I'm sure there's people that had bicycles, but it was a luxury to have a bicycle.

BN: Now the storage that you mentioned at the Venice church, is that the site of the community center?

NK: Yes, that was the Japanese school that was... it was originally on Jefferson Boulevard, but in 1941 or '42, they purchased the property right there on Braddock, and that's where the judo... they kind of consolidated the judo and the Japanese school, and that's where they continued on.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 10>

BN: And from there, let's move on to Tule Lake. And you moved with your family. What did you notice about Tule Lake that was different from Manzanar?

NK: Everything was word of mouth, and we knew we were going to go to Tule Lake because my brother and mother, father, they all signed the "no-no" questionnaire. And so once you did that, you're off to Tule Lake and eventually to Japan. And that was what my father wanted to do, and had to be in '43, we were sent to Tule Lake as a family. So the first time in a long time, we had a family group, as you might say.

BN: And did your sister, Shizuye, and her husband also...

NK: Yes, they also came too. They must have (also have had) "no-no," because they were just a block away from us in camp.

BN: So she was sort of living with his family?

NK: Right.

BN: So his family also...

NK: Yeah, he only had a mother and a brother, so they all were... signed up for "no-no." Now, just because you signed up for "no-no," later on, like even after the war ended, the people were given opportunities to change their minds. And although my brother-in-law signed "no-no," they did stay in the United States after the war ended and relocated back to the Venice area.

BN: What block were you in at Tule Lake?

NK: I was in Block 76, had to be Barrack either 4 or 5, and then the apartment was about 3.

BN: And then what was different about Tule Lake?

NK: Tule Lake, the weather was more harsh... cold. They used a coal-burning stove for heat. Manzanar used oil. I think it was diesel oil or something, but it was oil. That's the first time, at Tule Lake is the first time I saw coal, and living in Southern California, you never see any coal. But that was my first opportunity to see a piece of coal.

BN: And what about school? Because you were going to kind of an American-style school.

NK: Yeah, there was a... as people filled the camp in Tule Lake, almost everybody there was a "no-no," and they started a Japanese school, and they kind of patterned it off of the schools in Japan. And, in fact, they formed these younger groups of boys that exercised early in the morning. Sometimes it was kind of scary being twelve years old and have these people marching up and down the streets at four o'clock in the morning. It was not a comfortable feeling, but that was the way of life in Tule Lake in those days.

BN: Did you have to get the same kind of...

NK: I was fourteen, fifteen, and so I was not involved in the signing of the "no-no," "yes-yes" document. And so also the boys that were active in the exercising and so forth were all sixteen or older that I know of, so I wasn't involved in it also. Fortunately, they excused me from the bitter cold outside.

BN: How was your Japanese? How did you do in that school environment?

NK: Well, I felt comfortable. I would say amongst the... in my class I was above fifty percent in comprehension and so forth. But some of the boys and girls were really struggling because even before the war, they weren't sent to Japanese school because of the finances or otherwise. That's one of the advantages I had when I was at Tule Lake, that I used my Japanese that I learned before the war, and it was to my advantage.

BN: In your memoir, you wrote about a couple things that you did there with (regards to the) collecting arrowheads.

NK: Oh, yes. In Tule Lake, the Modoc Indians occupied that area where the camp is and there were many big battles fought with the U.S. Army and the Modoc Indians. And from that, there was a lot of arrowheads. All that area there was volcanic rock and a lot of obsidian. And naturally, with obsidian, the Indians made a lot of arrowheads and stones for hatchets and so forth. One of my best hobbies that I liked was collecting these arrowheads. And all you do is just walk up and down the areas where they -- [coughs] -- excuse me. They dug up the dirt, and look for the arrowheads. And the thing that was a prized thing was to find the arrowhead that had no blemishes on it. And you had young boys from six, seven years old, all up to teenagers and old men that were out there shoveling the dirt looking for arrowheads. In one area that there was a lot of arrowheads... this is within the camp... the people out there with shovel, and they're digging trenches like they do in World War I. You see a lot of people digging (the trencheds) to dodge bullets, but these were people looking for arrowheads. But the ground looked like it was (some) trenches, and it would produce some very, very good arrowheads.

BN: Do you still have them?

NK: I have them, but I don't know where they are. They're in my house somewhere.

BN: You need to dig some trenches. [Laughs] And the other thing I thought was a great story that you wrote about was that your father was starting to brew sake.

NK: Oh. My brother was at the age of... when we were at Tule... at the age of getting married. There were not too many weddings going on, but this one girl from Venice, he started dating, and they finally decided to get married. In camp, they had a mess hall for each block, and my father, I don't know where he learned it, but decided that he's, for his son's wedding, he's going to have a big party. And so months and months ahead of time, he started collecting rice and big barrels. He started to make some sake, home brew, and in our apartment, naturally, you have your beds and a table. But all of� a sudden he had these big barrels, and then he was to make the sake. And this was for the wedding party that he was going to (throw) for my brother. Once my father started making his sake, he started getting some old friends that we haven't seen in a long time. But they would come knocking at the door and see how my father is, and naturally, they had to take a taste of it before they left. And so we had some happy, happy people walking in and out of our apartment. The wedding went off very good and that was one of the few... well, in fact, the only wedding that I know of that they served sake and had a big party. So my brother was very fortunate to have my father throw the party for him.

BN: Did you notice, relative to Manzanar, greater security or guards? Because it was more of a prison atmosphere, right? From your perspective as a teenager, did you feel that?

NK: It was very subtle, but the Manzanar security was not quite as secure as Tule Lake. It felt like Tule Lake, because of the Hoshidan and the organizations, the army had to react to those things. And so the Tule Lake security felt more harsh in my mind.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 11>

BN: What was your reaction to the war ending, or news of the war ending?

NK: Well, that's one thing that was very... I was happy on one end and kind of sad on the other. I was happy to think of going to Japan and seeing my grandmother, sister, andlike on the vacation in 1935, I was there for one month, and so I felt that I had some kind of tie to the area. And not knowing the situation -- food and the economy and so forth in Japan -- I was kind of looking forward to going to Japan. Yet in the United States, all my friends were here except for the group that got on the same boat and went back to Japan. Otherwise, all my friends were in the United States, so it kind of made me happy on one end and kind of sad on the other.

BN: And you did have other friends... people who were going... also going?

NK: Yeah, there's many friends that were "no-nos" that went to Tule. And at Tule Lake, once they (got) the people that were "no-no" that wanted to go back to Japan, we got on the USS Gordon (and) were shipped to Japan. And then, the others, they were all "no-nos" that were in Tule Lake, they were... the war had ended and so they were released and they all kind of filtered their way back into life... and in most cases, into places where they were before the war. Except for a few people that might have gone to Colorado or Utah, inland states. I was not in the United States at that particular time, so I don't have too much details on that.

BN: Now, as far as your family intending to return to Japan, you said your father really wanted to go back. You were kind of looking forward to it. Was everyone else in the family kind of feeling the same way, or were any family members kind of opposed to going back?

NK: Well, I don't think that... we all didn't know how bad off the people, the citizens of Japan were in 1945. And then once they found out what the situation was, it just flipped your mind from one black to white. I myself never expected the situation being that bad. And it's hard to explain how much you should appreciate the little things like three meals a day. That was the basic that was taken away from you. You're just looking around for, "(Now) what can I eat next?" and there was nothing there to be had, and it was a very, very miserable existence.

BN: Can you tell me about the journey, the process of getting from Tule Lake to Uraga?

NK: Well, once they got notice that we're going to go back to Japan, and I remember that it was... we traveled by train to, I want to say Portland, but it was... gee, we were gathered together to put on the U.S. Army transport ship, USS Gordon, and came out to the Pacific Ocean from that area, and I remember it was like New Year's. It was either Christmas or New Year's, because I remember the sailors were celebrating and then we were miserable because as the ship pulled out into the ocean, the water was really, really rough, and everybody was getting sick. The sea was so rough that it felt like the boat was moving forward at a very low speed, and when the big swell would come, it would just take the front end of the ship and put it straight up in the air and come flopping down like a whale (does) when you see whale watchers on the beach nowadays... but it was very, very bad. What they had done was they put all the... they segregated the male and female, and it was not like family style. They just separated the male and female and that's how the boat got started out. That was one of the most miserable boat rides that I ever had.

BN: And then what happened when you landed?

NK: Well, we were told that the boat was going to go to Yokosuka, which is a Japanese naval base, but when we got to Japan, the USS Gordon pulled out on the backside of the land, a place called Uraga. And it was not a big town or anything. In fact, the only thing I remember about that is we were taken off the boat and put into either army or navy quarters when Japan was fighting. And that's where we sat, and as we were getting off the boat, everybody was... had an army blanket, and they were taking the army blankets that were on the ship and just throwing it on the dock and getting rid of it. (It's like) it's been contaminated by these Japanese people, so we'll get rid of those. I remember the navy guys taking those army blankets and just throwing them on the dock over there. And at the time, we were just thinking that, well, it's no big deal, we can get more on the other side there, and that was the feeling. But now you think about it, it wasn't that way. There wasn't any more on the other side of the hill, so it was a very cold winter, January, that we got off at Uraga, and it was very miserable. And that's the first taste of Japan that we got from the "no-no"... Tule Lake... and it got worse from there. It didn't get better.

BN: Did you stay at Uraga for a while or did you immediately...

NK: We stayed at Uraga. What they did was they had to process everybody that got off the ship, and they had trains going to various parts of Japan, and we had to... not "we," I say "we," but my father and mother and brother navigated the way through the system there. And I remember they hired a boxcar... railroad boxcar... which is, to my surprise... in Japan, those boxcars are, I would say, half the size of the boxcars in the United States. So when they say, "Oh, we got to get a boxcar," and here I'm thinking to myself, "My god, we only have a couple suitcase. What do they want with boxcar?" But that's what it was. It was a Japanese rail boxcar that we hired to carry most of our luggage from Uraga to Shiga-ken, which was probably a good eight hours train ride from Uraga town to Shiga-ken.

BN: So just to clarify, the group that's going, that came from Tule Lake, it's your parents, you and Kazuye, plus Minoru's family, too?

NK: Yeah, we all stayed together as a group. Because by then, my brother and sister-in-law had a baby boy. That was right before we got on the ship, not more than six months old.

BN: So there were seven of you.

NK: Yes, right. So the family is slowly growing.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 12>

BN: And then what happens now when you get back to, this is your father's home, right?

NK: Yes. I guess it was Shiga-ken, but when we got back to Shiga-ken, that's where my father's home was. We got our way back to the house, and the village is probably two miles from the main train station. And when we got there, the surprised look on the people -- when I say "people," it'd be my grandmother, my aunt and her daughter -- they were in... they had to move from Kyoto, the city of Kyoto and come back to live in my father's house during the war. And they didn't have an inkling that we were going to come from the United States back to Japan. And so they literally stood there with their mouth open saying, "What are you doing here?" (They said), "Why did you come back to this place when there's nothing here?" (But naturally), we didn't know anything like that... what was in store for us. It was a big, big shock to both sides, the people in Japan and our family that put our things together and pulled up to our own home to find that somebody else was occupying it.

BN: So how did you make ends meet?

NK: At first, the first few days, things were... relatives were happy and offered us some food and so forth. But within a week, reality set in and all that food that was being passed around disappeared, and the relatives were asking, "What are you going to do?" Well, naturally, we couldn't chase out my aunt and her daughter, so they took a portion of the house and then the rest of the house was occupied by the rest of the family. The main focus at that time was, "What are we going to eat next? Where are we going to get it from?" And that was the biggest problem the whole family had, and that had to be true with all the other ones too... other people that went back from Tule Lake. Starting with our family, my father knew immediately that he had to start doing some farming to get the food on the table, so he knew what his role was at the time. But by then, this was after he had his cancer operation, and so he was struggling along and a real, real tough situation. But he was determined to get his farm growing and get some food on the table. My brother said that he's going to go to Kyoto, which is like half hour, forty-five minutes from the village, and get a job and move out to Kyoto. Well, so he got a job, but he was commuting every day, and that was really, really hard when you've got a wife at home and a baby boy that's less than a year old. But he was determined to move out to Kyoto for a better life. My mother, she wanted to help my father, and so she took on a man's job to work out in the field. Farming, it just doesn't happen... you can't just plant a seed today and go out there and pick a turnip tomorrow, so it was a long road ahead, but that's what she was doing.

My sister, Kazuye, just graduated high school... eighteen years old... the father and mother said, "What are we going to do with Kazuye?" And they pondered and weren't sure, but there was a Buddhist priest that we knew from Los Angeles that said, "Well, we'll take care of her." And so they sent my sister over to Kyoto where they had the Buddhist temple, and they lodged her at a smaller temple within Kyoto, and found her a job at a department store called Takashimaya. And it's a large department store, but not as, some of the larger ones that exist right now, but it was a well-known regular department store. So anyway, she moved to Kyoto and went to work for Takashimaya as a salesperson, but Kazuye was not a strong person physically. And the life with no... lack of nutritious food and so forth, she got pleurisy, and not long after that, it turned into TB. And two years after we landed, she passed away from, I'd say malnutrition, and it was alack of medication, naturally. They just... first time I heard of penicillin and streptomycin. But those are the types of medicine they were talking about, but it was not available to people like us and my sister. We were too far down the line (there). It was very, very unfortunate for my sister.

So that left myself, and my father was working his farm with my mother. After a year... he worked about a year, and then he passed away. By then, I was working with my mother in the field and she says that she's got to get this crop of rice to keep going. And so I promised my mother that I would work one year to finish this crop, and you'll get on your feet and you can get going. And so, I moved back to the city (Kyoto)... from the city to Miyanishi, which is the village that our parents are from, and I started the farming cycle of growing rice. And everything was, naturally, new to me. I didn't even know one thing from another, but everything was watching what other people do and learn as you go along. And somehow or other, we struggled through that first year and we got a crop of rice. And that was enough for my mother to get started, and so I went back out to Kyoto and got a job with the United States Army. And we were classified as "foreign nationals." In other words, we weren't in the army. We weren't civilians working for them. But I worked at the Kyoto Hotel as a telephone operator, and (this was) because we had the English language, and what little Japanese we knew was enough to interpret and so forth. So I worked as a telephone operator for one year there at the Kyoto Hotel. And the Kyoto Hotel was very well-known for being one of the first-class hotels. It even had the emperor of Japan stay there on occasions. So it was a new experience for me -- coming out of a camp at Manzanar, Tule Lake, and never held a paying job. But the main thing was while working for the Kyoto Hotel, it was under U.S. Army control, and it was used as a U.S. Army officers billet. In other words, it was all the officers' quarters. The wages that we were paid was minimal. In fact, it was almost like getting a roll of toilet paper, you might say. It was worthless, but that they did was they gave us lodging, and they gave us three meals a day. And the three meals a day was a big, big help in surviving. And we ate the same food that the U.S. army officers did, so we were very happy with that situation.

BN: How old were you at that time? You must have been sixteen?

NK: Sixteen, seventeen.

BN: They hired you that young?

NK: Oh, yeah. During that period, they were desperate for people that spoke English and Japanese, and my going to Japanese school in Venice before the war came in handy in this situation.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 13>

BN: And then you said "we," so were there a lot of other Nisei at Tule Lake who were working there?

NK: There were Niseis that got stranded there during the war, had to spend their time in Japan during the war, I mean providing they were young enough to evade the draft, because a lot of friends, now, I know, were there during the war, and they had to suffer through the shortage of the food and so forth.

BN: Did you have much, any interaction with Nisei who were in the MIS at that time?

NK: Not really, because the soldiers kind of looked at us as civilians, non-military, and so we were kind of a class in itself. In between a Nisei, they knew that we existed, and they classified us as a foreign national. And there was a whole hotel of people like myself that worked at the offices and so forth that spoke Japanese and English. (In fact), in Kyoto, there's a hotel called Station Hotel, and that housed, back in 1946 and '47, that housed all the foreign nationals that were working for the army. And we got... they board right there.

BN: And the foreign nationals were largely (Nisei, right)? Did you have much interaction with Japanese nationals also? I'm just wondering how they viewed the Nisei.

NK: Well, I think, like myself, I took advantage of the fact that we were not a Japanese national. And so, like in '46 and '47, like going on the train, the conductor would ask for our ticket, and then we just tell them, in English we'd say -- purposely in English -- we'd say, "We're foreign nationals, so we don't have to pay." Well, Japan was still organizing, trying to get the government straightened out, and a democracy working, I guess, you might call it. And so the police didn't know what to do, the conductor didn't know what to do when we told him that. So we used to go on the trains from Kyoto to Tokyo, don't pay for it. And I'm sure they, in their mind, they're looking down on the fact that these 'son of a guns' are really taking advantage of us. Didn't like it, but they had to go along with it.

BN: So you had a little bit of privilege as kind of...

NK: Yes, we had a perk that really wasn't there, but we made it.

BN: You were still U.S. citizens, right?

NK: Yes, at that point we were.

BN: I see.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 14>

BN: Oh, and then I wanted to also ask you about, in your memoir you wrote a little bit about the black market.

NK: Oh, yeah. 1946, '47, things were... I keep talking about there was lack of food. Well, farmers, if they grow rice, each year, the government will say, "For each acre, you have to produce so much rice." And then they have to sell that to the government and, in turn, the government will ration that out. They had a rationing system. And so they would ration that out to the rest of the cities and such, whether it was a city or (in the) villages or wherever. But the farmers, naturally, they don't want to give their... sell their rice then to the government because they paid very low prices for it. But, (in turn), what they would do is they would pool a little bit of (that rice) and kind of hide it, and have a stash of their own, you might say. And so what the farmers did was these people from the city would come out to the country and buy the rice, vegetables, foodstuffs, from the farmers that were stashing these things waiting for these people to come to buy it. And this was the black market system that existed, and a lot of the people that were in the black market business were Koreans that were... came to Japan or forced to come to Japan during the war. And they were rough and tumble people that got on the train, came out to the villages in the country and bought up the stuff, take it back to the city and double the price and sell it. That was the way of living for people. Food was available if you had the money, okay, so there's a distinction there between not having food and, yes, the food is there, but it's just a matter of money.

BN: The other thing I wanted to ask you about was, you had the one sister, Chiyeko, who had stayed in Japan throughout. What became of her?

NK: Okay, Chiyeko stayed in Japan during the war, stayed with my grandmother. During the war she got married to a Japanese citizen, and he was also in Shiga-ken, but at the northern tip of the prefecture. They had one child who grew up and moved to Kyoto, and at Kyoto he was... worked as a conductor on the train from Kyoto to Osaka, the Kansai airport. They had a special train running back and forth to accommodate the people on the train and airplane. Chiyeko got divorced from this person, and in Japan, a divorce is a very no-no thing. But she couldn't take it anymore, so she divorced him and then I worked out papers and got my... in fact, once I settled down and got over here, I brought back my mother, my sister Chiyeko, and paperwork also for my brother and his family, and got them all back to the United States. This happened between (1946) to 1958. In that period, that all had transpired.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 15>

BN: So you're working at the hotel, doing the telephone operator work. How did you learn of the opportunity to come back to California?

NK: On the telephone, working as a telephone operator, we had access to making calls all over Japan. So I had friends that went from Tule and they were throughout Japan, because it's just like... right now, there's probably people that lived in Venice with me that went back to Japan the same way, (but not in one spot). (They were) throughout Japan. But working at the telephone, we kind of kept in touch with each other and so we... somehow word filtered down that... what to do if you want to go back. And I started working on, to get myself back. I was eligible to do that because I was underage at the time that they did the "no-no" thing, and so I started my paperwork. When I say paperwork, like get a sponsor in the United States, that was one of the main things. You had to have monetary means for the boat fare. And I remember I needed ninety-eight dollars. Again, going back to Mr. Obayashi that I spoke about earlier, I went to him and I says, "Can you please lend me ninety-eight dollars? And I'll pay you back sooner or later, when I get back to the United States." So got ninety-eight dollars and made several trips from Kyoto to the Yokohama consulate, American consulate in Yokohama. And I had to work (through) there, and the U.S. consulate, Japanese consulate, and at that time, I still had a dual citizenship, Japanese and American citizenship, but the law was that if you're going to do this, you have to renounce your Japanese citizenship. So although I had dual citizenship, I lost my Japanese citizenship when I returned to the United States.

BN: How did your mother feel about that?

NK: Well, she understood, and I told her that once I get established, I will get her. But by then, the crisis of the no food on the table was kind of disappearing, because as time went along, things got better and better. But I think the worst period was 1946, and a little bit better in '47, but '46 was a bad, bad year.

BN: So can you tell me about, now, the voyage back?

NK: Yeah, in 1947, mid-year, my father passed away and my sister passed, Kazuye, passed away. And that left my mother by herself there, but I was determined to get back to the United States and make a life here in the United States. And so I started working on the papers, and I finally got passage on the same boat that took me to Japan, the USS Gordon, but now it was under the President line, and it was the Gordon. Same ship, but I needed ninety-eight dollars for my passage, and I think that included a few dollars of spending money. But that was the fare I needed from Mr. Obayashi to get back to (the) United States. And he went along with it, and let me borrow that, and that's where I got my passage. Really, I didn't have any suitcase to speak of, but with the clothes on my back, I headed for San Francisco.

BN: Was the ship conditions a lot better?

NK: No.

BN: Similar?

NK: There was no improvement. Instead of six layers of bunks, they made it to two layers. So it was not an improvement, but it was uncanny having to go on the same boat back and forth.

BN: And then you wrote about, you were going to surprise your sister?

NK: Well, something backfired. One of the things I did was when I left Japan, I had my idea of what I want to do when I get over here, so I thought I'd get to San Francisco. And about two months earlier, about three of my friends had come ahead of me and landed at San Francisco and were living in that area. So I thought, well, I'm going to stop by and see them and then I'll come down to Venice here to stay with my sister and brother-in-law. Well, when I got off the boat and was walking down the gangplank, I look up and I see my sister and brother-in-law in the crowd. I said, "Uh-oh, what's going on here?" I didn't mention anything, and I was going to try to surprise them that, here I am. But when they saw me, they cussed me up and down, saying that, "How come you didn't let us know? We had to, last minute, take off work and come down here." And I explained how I was going to surprise my friends, and they were very, very upset about it, but eventually they got over it.

BN: How did they find out that you were coming if you didn't tell them?

NK: I believe they told me that there was some kind of an article in the Rafu Shimpo, which I never saw.

BN: I actually found an article with your name in it (coming back), so yeah, that sounds about right. So you go back with them, then.

NK: Yes. So I just said hello to my friends and we ate dinner and then we headed home.

BN: And then what did you do then?

NK: Most... I shouldn't say most, but many of the Japanese Niseis or Sanseis, when they got out of camp, started in the gardening business because you could go work for somebody at hourly wages, or you'd buy some equipment and start your own business. You could start a business, gardening business, with a reasonable amount of money, and so that's what many of the people did. And my brother-in-law was one of those people. And he rented a house, small cottage, in Venice from an acquaintance they knew from before the war. And so by then, my sister had a baby boy, and so her husband and her mother-in-law, I moved in with them and slept on the floor and went to work for my brother-in-law. He did the gardening and he had a very, very good... he got very good at talking with people, and so at the jobs he had, gardening jobs, he had homes in Beverly Hills that he maintained. There was a house that was next door to Robert Taylor on Sunset Boulevard. He worked for them. And he did a good gardening job. Amongst other things that he had to worry about is what are you going to do about me? And so he suggested, well, why don't you come work for him, and he could get some kind of business going. And so what he had in mind was that he would do landscaping putting in new lawns, because new homes are popping up all over the place. And so in Mar Vista, near Culver City, there was a Grandview Hills, they had the tract homes up there... (Trousdale tract homes)... and he went there, and every home needed a landscaping job. So that was one of the projects that my brother-in-law Kenny decided that he would tackle.

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

<Begin Segment 16>

NK: Myself, like I said, I got off at San Francisco, and from San Francisco, we rode down to this home in Venice there. And that was on a Saturday, and Sunday, I said, "What's going on?" They said, "He's going to work." I said, "Okay, I'm going, too." So without a day's rest or anything, I started to work with my brother-in-law. And I started out as a gardener's helper. And it's hourly wages, and I don't even know how much he paid me, but it seemed that it was not more than a dollar an hour. And I think that was the going rates at the time, but that's how I got started, and one of the first jobs I had was doing the gardening work for my brother-in-law.

BN: How did you like doing the gardening and landscaping?

NK: I hated it. [Laughs] No, it was, to me, at that time, knowing the conditions in Japan, my first goal was to, what can I do to ease some of the pain for my brother and mother back in Japan? And every week, I'd set some money aside and I would buy things that he could sell on the black market, and they were things like lipstick, saccharin -- a number one item. Anything that you could buy at a drugstore, like saccharine and lipstick, in Japan it was so scarce that people were paying high prices for these things. And so I would try to buy something that was light enough that I wouldn't pay too much for the postage, and I used to send these packages to my brother and mother, and they in turn would sell it and get money to help survive on. So I did that for a number of years, I want to say, but it was that first crucial month or so that I believe it really helped them out.

BN: You were a good son and younger brother.

NK: Well, I want to feel that I was, but it made me feel good inside.

BN: When you came back, because you grew up in Venice and you were back in Venice, how had it changed?

NK: The change was the farm. There was a few of the farmers that came back to their old stomping grounds and continued farming. But they're slowly getting edged out and, amongst the farmers, there was two groups, you might say. The group that had bought the land, and people that didn't. And the people that bought the land were usually (where) the parents used the son's or the daughter's name to get... bypass that law that they had against the "enemy aliens" owning land. And then the others were the people that rented or leased the land. And so the people that bought the land became millionaires, and then there's the others.

BN: Did a lot of the other Japanese that you grew up with return to Venice, or did they kind of go all over?

NK: Many of the people returned to the area, but that gradually changed as the kids grew up and they moved to, further out to where more homes were available. And so there were a number of people throughout the area that returned to the close vicinity of where they left.

BN: So you were working for your brother for a while, and then after that, you went to trade school?

NK: Yeah, what I did was I worked with my brother-in-law. And along with that, my mother always, my father also... was always harping on me to go to school. And so once I started working for my brother-in-law, I thought, "Well, I've got to do something about the schooling end." And so I started going to Santa Monica trade school, and they had a welding, mechanic, auto mechanics, body and fender and machine shop, beauty shop -- all these different trades that was available. And I started out in machine shop. I didn't even know what a machine shop was. But I started out in machine shop, and told my mother, "Okay, now I started school, so I hope you're happy." So that was my excuse to fulfill my school. But along with that, I did go to night school to get my high school diploma.

BN: And then can you talk a little bit about also working at a lawmower...

NK: Yeah, there was a lawnmower shop on Olympic Boulevard in West L.A. It was a one-man operation, and it was a good friend of my brother-in-law Kenny (Kiyohiro). He says, "Well, if you want a job, I can get you one at the lawnmower shop." And so I was open to anything, so I started working for him part-time, and it didn't interfere with school or anything, so that worked out okay. I worked for him for a number of years... had to be a couple years or so, but right about then, I got my draft notice. And so in 1951, early 1951, I was drafted into the army and went to Camp Roberts for basic training, went to Japan, and went to NYK building for two months' training on Japanese. And I was supposed to go to Korea from there, but they sent me to a detachment that was in Sendai. (And so I stayed in Sendai) for six months or so. Then we went to Korea and spent one year, and after one year I got discharged out of the army in 1953.

BN: What was your, having been sent to camp and Japan, what was your feeling about being drafted?

NK: I felt it was just a way of life and took it in stride. In fact, after I got out of the service, I felt that that was a good experience for me. I didn't have a... it wasn't hindering me from doing what I wanted to do, and it taught me a lot of things I would have never known. So I think it's good training (ground) for a young person.

BN: And then while you were in Japan, were you able to visit your family?

NK: Yeah. When I was in Japan, whether it was in service or traveling or otherwise, I was always able to go see my relatives, including when the time was, it could have been my mother, my sister, or I had many cousins in the Kyoto area. All these people were mostly concentrated in that Kyoto area, so made it convenient when I went to Japan, that I could go to one spot and see all these friends.

BN: Were you able to do that on a fairly regular basis?

NK: It depended on the situation. In some cases, I was on vacation, I would kind of (route) my itinerary so I passed through Kyoto, and it gave me a chance to talk to my relatives.

BN: I mean, you had been in, it was what, five, six years after you had left (camp). How had Japan changed, too, in your eyes, in that time period?

NK: Japan was changing so fast that it was not believable really. It was quite a change. It made me very surprised.

BN: In what ways?

NK: Well, when I was in Japan in 1946, '47, right after Tule Lake, the area from Yokohama up to Tokyo, you know, it's that Shinagawa area, that there was not a building standing. Everything was leveled down to flat or maybe one story or just a twisted rubble there. And when I went back later... that had to be in early 1950s... buildings were going up and all those flat areas (are starting) to build up and there was food at restaurants. It was coming back to normal, you might say, and it was very surprising.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 17>

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.