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TI: What was the name given to you when you were born?

RK: Oh, Ronald Isao Ota.

TI: So tell me, so Ota, your name now is Kenmotsu. So tell me where the Ota comes from.

RK: The Ota were my real parents in camp. What I was told was that I had six brothers and sisters, I was number seven, and my parents at the time, the Otas, felt that they just couldn't handle one more. So they asked a Buddhist minister if he could find somebody that would take care of me while we were in camp, so that's how I got put up with the Kenmotsu family.

TI: And as you found out this eventually, did you ever learn the names of your birth parents?

RK: No.

TI: And just for the purposes of this recording, we did, at Densho, the staff did some research, and just for your information, your birth father's name was Akito Ota, he was born February 1904, and before the war, he was from Los Angeles. And then the mother was Chiyeko Ota, born September 28, 1912, and so, again, you wouldn't know this, but I just wanted, for the purposes of this interview, to just mention that. But now, when you say this Buddhist minister found another family, do you know what the process was? How did they do that? Was it like a formal process, or was just, "I know a family"?

RK: I'm really not sure, but probably the minister just went from family to family and asked if they could take care of me. And at the time I had no siblings in the Kenmotsu family.

TI: And just, again, from the records, I think we'll get into more his... when we look at the records at Colorado, Amache camp, there was no record of a formal adoption...

RK: That's correct.

TI: ...from an Ota to Kenmotsu. And so it appears that at this time, it was almost an informal arrangement that you were given to this other couple.

RK: Yeah.

TI: So from Amache, you then left in October 1945 to go to San Francisco. Again, you're like this baby. I wanted to ask, what are some of your earliest memories when you think of, as a child, what's the first things you can remember?

RK: Probably when I was about two. My mom and dad, whenever we went to my uncle's place for dinner, they would kind of discuss what was happening, what happened in camp. Because my dad's sister, they were in the same camp, actually, in the same building as I was, so they kind of discussed things.

TI: At those early ages, do you remember at all how it was discussed in terms of maybe not in terms of the details, but maybe just the feeling of when it was discussed, was it done with any emotion that you could remember?

RK: Well, I didn't understand at the time what they were talking about anyway. All I remember is what they told me. I guess I was one, and it was in the middle of winter, snowing, and they told me to come inside and I wouldn't. So they just let me sit outside the barrack, basically the barracks, and I basically turned blue. That's the way I was, I was kind of hard headed.

TI: [Laughs] So even at that early age, you were very strong willed.

RK: Yeah.

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