<Begin Segment 8>

TI: Yeah, I want to talk a little bit, I mean, a lot of what you know about what happened to your family came from your sister.

KN: Correct.

TI: And she passed away almost eight years ago or so?

KN: Yes.

TI: So tell me first a little bit about her. About how much older was she in terms of the war, and let's talk about some of the things she told you.

KN: Again, I have three sisters, the oldest one is in the picture, the logo, Shizuka. She was married right out of camp, so basically she went straight to Los Angeles, so she didn't live here in San Francisco with us. And my dad was against the marriage, so...

TI: Oh, I didn't know that.

KN: Yeah, so it was something like, so they didn't contact us very much. And then there's... shall I continue? There's Kiyoka, the second oldest sister.

Off camera: Can you start again?

KN: Okay, so the second oldest sister is Kiyoka, and she's the one out of all of us that was the most outspoken. Outspoken in a good way, not loud, not at all. And the third sister was Sumika. But the one that we often talk about is Kiyoka because... we called her Kiyo. For me in particular, at twenty months up to, I was five when I came out of camp, so we spent three and a half years there. Especially after camp, she was like a second mother to me, she really took care of me. And along with Sumi, they bathed me, my mom was way too tired working. So they took care of me and that was really good. I mean, I remember all those things. I'm sure anything good about my personality comes from them and my mom, I'm certain, in fact. So Kiyo had an impact on my life as few other people have. But personality-wise and just doing the best you can, that comes from my sister Kiyo. She just always pushed, but in the right way. She has a daughter and son, and I'm sure she did the same thing, but somehow it caught on with me and I just tried to do things on my own. So Kiyo was, again, this outspoken person in the sense that when the government sent -- this is during the redress period, during the late 1980s -- the spokesperson came to the JCCNC center here, community center. And while he was speaking, my sister went right up and showed him this one document that says, each of us have this, that says that we were arrested by the FBI. And surprisingly he said, on the spot, that, "You qualify." So like we were kind of shocked. The other Japanese Peruvians that were there didn't have the same papers.

TI: So let me back up. So when he said, "You qualify," so you received the twenty thousand dollars?

KN: My sisters and brothers did.

TI: I didn't know. So your family, I mean, those were about the only Japanese Peruvians who received that.

KN: I think so.

TI: Because they received a different sum.

KN: Five thousand dollars many years later. The key was the letter of apology from Ronald Reagan, and to receive the twenty thousand. That didn't come automatically, again, because, again, Kiyo, she could have waited later, but she just had to do this.

TI: So tell me again, what was this piece of paper that she showed? You said this was from the FBI?

KN: That we were arrested by the FBI to bring us here.

TI: And where did she get this piece of paper?

KN: We all have it somewhere, yes, every one. They give one to individuals, not a whole family, it's individual.

TI: So did every Japanese Peruvian in theory have that?

KN: Not necessarily, that's why some of them didn't get it. Unfortunately, so much of this was based on a technicality. I told you, Hiroshi Shimizu's sister was only a couple years younger, didn't receive it, because they cut off the date to 1946 or something, well, she was born in '47, but she was in camp. [Laughs] So she didn't receive it, Hiroshi received it.

TI: Received the five thousand?

KN: No, twenty thousand, yeah.

TI: Okay, right.

KN: As I mentioned before, my mom and dad had passed away already, so they really were the ones that...

TI: But this is new information. Because going back to Hiroshi, he was a U.S. citizen and he was born in the United States. But your family, your older siblings, were born in Peru, and so I didn't understand that, I didn't realize that some actually did receive the twenty thousand.

KN: And again, I have papers that showed that.

TI: Okay.

KN: So it'd be useful to have that on record.

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