<Begin Segment 12>

DG: So go ahead and go on now to Seattle then.

KS: So we moved to Seattle and I think my mother was happy because the Salvation Army does evangelistic work. They get together and go down and beat the drums and give their sermon on the street. I remember going down with them and helping them beat the drums and the Salvation Army captain would play, I think it was a bugle or coronet, some kind of instrument, and he would play the songs, and there would be a gathering of people that would come to listen. But the living situation in Seattle was really quite sad. We lived up on the hill which used to be the red light district. For us children to walk to school meant about eight or ten blocks of a very bad district in Seattle. I remember my father used to walk with us every morning to school because we were afraid. School was also another very interesting experience for me. I went to school and I was in the fourth grade and found myself about one year ahead of all the youngsters in the fourth grade, so the teacher promptly skipped me to the fifth grade. During the recess when everybody was playing in the school yard, most of the children were Chinese and Japanese and they either spoke Chinese or Japanese, and I could speak neither. There might have been one or two black children and a few white children, but I don't remember making any friends. I felt like I was ostracized. And then skipping the class also made school quite difficult, but my dad decided that that was no place to raise a bunch of children so he found a little truck garden in Kingston, and moved the whole family there. And the whole family actually, if there are any roots at all, that's where they planted some roots.

DG: In Kingston?

KS: In Kingston.

DG: By then you were seven children?

KS: We were all seven children. The youngest one was about a year old when we moved to Kingston.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.