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DG: Okay, Kiyo, let's talk about your family.

KS: Our family, we were not so structured here in the United States. My father comes from Hiroshima, and when he was about eighteen years old (heard) they were recruiting farm laborers or any kind of laborers in Japan for work in Hawaii. He was a good swimmer and swam out to the boat and he got on ship and was brought to Hawaii along with something like two hundred or three hundred other workers that they recruited in Hiroshima. He enjoyed going to Hawaii, he was young.

DG: How old was he?

KS: He was eighteen years old at the time.

DG: What did his parents do in Hiroshima?

KS: They had farmland which they farmed and their house was up against a hill. They had quite a bit of property, but I think at that time -- my dad used to talk about when he first left Japan -- he just plain was young and full of a lot of youthful spirit and he just wanted to see the world. In Hawaii, he had a very friendly personality and was not bashful about anything. I think he already knew how to ride a horse and there weren't very many workers at that time that would ride a horse, and so he very soon had a job as a foreman of the group. He did very well and after about two or three years of working in Hawaii, he had a chance, he got to meet a captain of a ship that was anchored in Hawaii. [Interruption] After he met this captain on the ship, he got a job as a cabin boy or steward or whatever you want to call it, and he sailed on that ship. He just got on and left Hawaii, just like that, and he ended up traveling with the ship. He went to England and from there the ship went to America and it was in the Boston Harbor. He dove off of that ship. [Laughs] And he swam to shore! In Boston, he (had) jumped ship and I think he had to find work.

DG: What years are we talking about?

KS: We're talking about the (late 1800s), when he was just, about in his early twenties.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.