<Begin Segment 26>

DH: Not all the islanders returned to the island. What made you decide you wanted to come back here?

KN: I always wanted to come back. I don't know why. I just didn't want to live anyplace else probably because I didn't know anyplace else.

IN: No. After traveling around during the war, this was sort of an ideal place to come back to.

DH: When were you released to come back home to Bainbridge Island?

KN: We left there in October '45.

DH: And what was it like when you came back?

KN: Well, let's see, I...

IN: Well, luckily I had sold my farm before we came, before the ban was lifted. And luckily her folks retained their house and farm and so they had a tenant that stayed at the farm all during the war, but she would not move out when (the folks) decided to come back. And so (the folks) lived in the basement of the house for a number of days until she finally gave up and moved out.

DH: The basement of your own home?

KN: Concrete floors.

DH: And you sold your farm, your father's farm, during the eight days that you had to prepare to leave?

IN: No, I did not. It was after the ban was lifted and I tried to get back the farm, but the manager that I had, that took over the place made it very difficult for us to regain the farm. And rather than go fight the fellow about how to regain the farm -- he had planted some new plants in the meantime and he wanted an exorbitant price for that, and he made it very, very difficult for us to regain the farm and so we finally ended up selling to him.

DH: So you had no place to go to. You had to move into the basement of your parents' place. Until they finally, until the tenant finally left. And that's what you found when you came back, after they were supposed to guarantee your crops and all this.

KN: Let's see. The folks... when the folks came back, they didn't have a hard time regaining their strawberry farm. I think about that time, didn't the manager sort of abandon it because it was all weeds.

IN: No, he did not, but --

KN: He didn't?

IN: No, but he was a fellow that just, didn't make it hard for them to come back. He cooperated very well.

DH: You moved back to the Sakai's to do farming for a little while.

KN: No, we didn't farm there. We just stayed while we looked for a place, but then we finally found a place to lease in Tacoma. So we went over there, moved over there, and started farming. And I don't know how many months we were there, not too long. April, May, June, July, August, September, about 5-6 months. And then this dental surgeon in Tacoma decided to sell the farm and he just sold. So there we didn't have -- we had to move again so we came back to folks' again. Then we seriously started to looking for a place of our own, and after looking all over the place, we found this place, which was just really run down and farm house and the garage was over the piling, over the water, and there was a sheep barn back where our garage is now and a chicken coop right out there where my bedroom is and the weeds had overgrown because the renters had not taken care of the place. But when Sam looked at it, he says, "There's potential," so here we are today.

DH: And a beautiful home.

KN: No sign of the old barn or anything.

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.