<Begin Segment 9>

TI: So when you're... and I'm not sure if that's Powell Street or Sacramento, but when you're in elementary school, your mother told you something about your status in terms of essentially being adopted. Do you remember your mom doing that and what she said?

RK: Yeah. We were living in this second hotel, they were managing the second hotel.

TI: So the second hotel, meaning, so you went from Powell Street to Sacramento. Were you living at Sacramento?

RK: And then we went in and they moved to another hotel downtown.

TI: Okay, this is the Tenderloin area.

RK: Right.

TI: Okay, so you moved there, and so about what grade would that be then?

RK: I was in the fifth grade.

TI: Okay. So you're about to... about ten or eleven years old?

RK: In that area, ten or eleven. I always used to like to joke around, that was me, because whenever I dealt with my friends, I would always be joking around with them, I'd laugh. And my dad used to get mad; he used to get mad at me. I remember my mom said, she said something like, "I'm going to go downtown shopping," or something like that, and I just kind of made a smart-aleck response. So that's when she kind of let me know that I'd been adopted. Her words were, "You're adopted, you know," and that kind of shocked me. It was like all this time I thought you were my parents, and now you're telling me you're not.

TI: Given the circumstances that you just described, you said, you mentioned you were kind of being smart-alecky with your mom. So do you think she blurted it out because she was hurt in some ways and she was trying to get back at you? It was almost like she...

RK: Yeah, I guess. And then she must have told my dad that she let me know that I was adopted. And right after that... I was in the fifth grade. Right after that, that whole episode, I got sick. I mean, my dad started giving me chores to do around the hotel. My brother wasn't getting any of that, but I was, so that kind of put pressure on me, so I got sick, I came down with an ulcer. Well, they thought I had appendicitis.

TI: So let's go back to when you first, when your mom blurted out that you were adopted, and you didn't know this.

RK: Right.

TI: How did that affect you? What were you thinking? What was the first reaction when you heard that?

RK: It was like, how did this happen? My real parents don't me and now you're telling me this? You've been hiding this from me for all these years. This is something you could have told me a long time ago, but now you just blurt it out. So that kind of tells me that, okay, my real family, the original family doesn't want me, and now you're telling me this, does that mean that you don't want me either?

TI: It seems like you were really hurt.

RK: Yeah, I was. And it affected me to the point where I got sick. First they thought I had an ulcer, not ulcer, but appendicitis, because it was on the right side.

TI: And so during this period, to have an ulcer, that acid would just stay there for a while. So after you were told, and then you mentioned that your mom told your dad, were you feeling, how would you describe how you were feeling like in the weeks after that? Was it always on your mind, were you always thinking about it?

RK: Well, yeah. If you're ten, eleven years old, and it's always going through your head, right, "Boy, what's going on here? I'm not wanted by anybody."

TI: So that's what you're thinking, "Why did my birth parents give me away?"

RK: Yeah. See, I didn't know, nobody let me know that my birth parents had all these kids, and that they had to give up, they have to give me up. See, I didn't find that out until I was in the military. I was in basic training, actually.

TI: So you didn't know the circumstances?

RK: So when they thought I had appendicitis, I was in the hospital for two days, and they couldn't find anything wrong. I had to take x-rays, the whole works, couldn't find anything, so they sent me home, and a few days later I was back in the hospital. I got back into that environment at home, and it just compounded everything. So then two days later, I was back in the hospital going through more tests, and that's when they found the ulcer.

TI: When they found out that it was an ulcer, did any of the medical people start asking you questions, like trying to get at the cause of what was causing the ulcer? Did they ask you, like, "How are things at home?" those kind of things?

RK: No.

TI: Did it ever come up with anyone that you just sort of told, "The reason I'm feeling so upset is that I just found out that I was adopted?"

RK: No, nobody asked me. They just assumed, okay, must be some kind of, maybe something happened at school or something.

TI: You talked about, after you found out, after your mom told you that you were adopted, you said that she told your father also, and that he started treating you differently?

RK: Yeah, he did.

TI: And then you mentioned that when you went in the first time for the appendicitis, they didn't find anything, you said you had to go back into that environment. What did you mean by "going back into that environment"? What was that like?

RK: Well, it was like, "Do I have to put up with more of this, not physical, but verbal abuse?" Well, maybe them not talking to me. Even my brother stopped talking to me. He didn't know, but...

TI: He probably sensed something was going on.

RK: Probably. So I was sitting there having dinner one night, yeah, I couldn't even eat anything. But I'd be sitting at the dinner table and nobody was talking, nobody said anything.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2024 Densho. All Rights Reserved.