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BN: You had mentioned that in terms of your... of course, we know from JCCH work that the FBI came in and arrested all these community leaders and so forth. But you mentioned your dad was not really caught up in that? In fact, it turned out somewhat beneficial for him in some ways.

JK: Yeah, we didn't know about that. That's what I found out by being at JCCH.

BN: So no one in your family was really affected by the arrests?

JK: Right. Because the main thing that I remember about that period was that we were all called upon to be patriotic. And I've been reading since then, and I know the morale committee had a lot to do with that. And so we, in school, all I remember -- and Betsy Young remembers this, too -- we had to buy war bonds. And then my mom gathered all the aunties together and they did volunteer work for the Red Cross, knitting and so forth. My dad became a volunteer fireman for our neighborhood. And all I remember about that was they had to learn how to be on the fire truck and not fall off. And they had to hold on and run, and then all us kids would be running in back. And then when they had to learn how to hold the hose, it would writhe all over the place, and they'd be going all over the place, and kids would all be laughing. I mean, that's all I remember about that part.

BN: Were there any families in your neighborhood that were affected? Mr. whatever, Yamamoto down the street was arrested?

JK: No, I don't remember any of that.

BN: It might have been going on and you just weren't aware, but you don't remember?

JK: It was going on very secretly. In fact, I was in sixth grade then, and two of my classmates had that experience. They never, ever talked about it. I didn't find out either of them had experiences like that until I was at JCCH many years later.

BN: And then we're jumping ahead a little bit here, but I also wanted to ask you, in a prior interview, you mentioned you had a couple of cousins that were in the army and you corresponded with them.

JK: Yes, uh-huh. Two of my cousins were in the 442, and by then, that was two years later. So being twelve years old, my mom told me, "You're old enough to write letters. They need letters." And so I used to write faithfully to both of them. One was actually in action, the other one was selected to drive around an officer. And so when they talked about casualties and so on, we kind of, I kind of felt like, for sure, the one that was a driver for an officer would come home. We weren't so sure about the other one, but it turned out the opposite. And the one, shortly before he was scheduled to come home, he was killed, and that was a shock to the family. And the other one came home safely.

BN: Kind of irony, exactly the opposite.

JK: Exactly the opposite, yeah. But according to the newspaper article, six hundred people attended his funeral.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.