<Begin Segment 8>

BN: Were you involved in any kinds of outside community activities? Girl Scouts and the JA sports leagues?

KM: You know, it's so funny. The sports thing was totally out of my realm of reality. My mother was actually kind of athletic, or so she claimed. She said she played hockey or something. But we never went outside Maryknoll in terms of sports. So we actually had fairly good sports teams, we played softball and baseball. Not volleyball so much or basketball, but Girl Scouts, the Catholic organization, Sodality, went to Little Tokyo to do service stuff, and Miyako Hotel was still around to reach out to the Japanese that were there. But yeah, the Girl Scouts, my mother was involved, my father was involved. When we had camping trips, they usually drove. So my mother was very engaged. She was one of the few mothers, she was engaged with the Fujinkai at the school or the church, Junior Ladies Guild. So we knew a lot of the Nisei parents and women, they would always be talking because my mother is very social, so she knew everybody and they knew her.

BN: So, wait, this is a Catholic Fujinkai?

KM: Yeah.

BN: Did they call it that?

KM: They called it Fujinkai, though. They did call it Fujinkai, but more so Junior Ladies Guild. But I remember Fujinkai, too. And then I remember my mother picking up doughnuts at Cooper's Doughnuts in skid row, fifth and... I think it's People's Market now.

BN: And then so you were there 'til, you said, eighth grade?

KM: Yeah. So eighth grade, and we're in Boyle Heights 'til then. And we move out of Boyle Heights again, totally for my sister and myself. My sister had already started Immaculate Heart, so traveling from Boyle Heights to Silver Lake on the bus for two years. I can't even imagine that, but she did that for two years. But when I graduated, they looked for a house in Silver Lake or J-Flats, and we moved out here in 1962.

BN: Yeah, so you were fourteen-ish.

KM: Yeah.

BN: Was the community, the J-Flats area, was it more Japanese at that point?

KM: To me, I think it was. Because we knew people that had businesses on Virgil and families that were living along Hoover and also Melrose, because we would, old Maryknoll friends were there, old friends from Boyle Heights were living in Silver Lake. So we knew that there were quite a few Japanese around that area, and on our block there were a number of Japanese families, too, on Lucille Avenue.

BN: And is this the house that you mentioned your mother's parents had moved in with you. Was it that house?

KM: Well, we lived in two houses on the same street.

BN: Oh, okay.

KM: So we lived in a duplex first, because they needed to find a place fast, because it wasn't in the best condition, but we lived in a duplex and we actually had our own bedrooms, my sister and myself. And then that place we moved three doors down, and then that house down below had a little unit where my grandparents lived while I was in high school, maybe two or three years. And they went to the church, the Japanese Christian church nearby.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.