<Begin Segment 3>

JN: Think back to February 7th, I mean, December 7th, (1941), I'm sorry... Pearl Harbor day. What do you remember about that day? Where were you? How did you feel?

LK: I don't remember anything about that day, I mean, not specifically. I don't, I don't even... many people have asked me that and I think I was too young. I have no recollection of my reaction or how I felt about that. All I remember is my mother saying we have to... we're gonna go on a vacation, and how excited I was about that. I don't think I was... I was just really naive. And when I compare with grade school children today, I think, even as a second grader, I was pretty naive.

JN: And your, and during the school, your friends and your teachers, they didn't treat you...

LK: I don't, I don't remember any incidents of any kind that was any different than any other, yeah, day in school. Either that or I've repressed it, but I don't remember anything untoward about that time at all.

JN: Do you remember about the roundups? How did that affect your family?

LK: Where they came to... I, what I remember -- and I can't tell if it's what I remember because of the pictures I've seen or if it's something that I remember -- but I do remember the Filipino hired hands came to the house, because my father wasn't here. It was just my mom, because they had taken Dad away to Missoula earlier because he couldn't prove his citizenship and he had... they found rifles and dynamite in the barn and that was cause enough for them to remove him first. And I remember Felix and Elaulio and there were several Filipino bachelors who were actually my... they started as my grandparents' hired hands and then they stayed on with my, my parents. And my father was not a farmer. But I remember Felix and Elaulio coming to the house and seeing us off. I remember that.

JN: Do you remember when they took your father away?

LK: I don't remember that. And that part, too I, I think it's because he was a salesman who worked for Friedlander and Sons and he commuted to Seattle every day. And then sometimes he went to Eastern Washington, and he went to other... and even Idaho, I think, to sell, to sell jewelry for the Friedlanders. And so he'd be gone for several days at a time and, and so I think it was just taken as a matter of course that Dad wasn't home sometimes. And so I don't remember feeling any kind of... well, feeling anything different about that. It's only as a, afterwards, and as a teenager that I look back and I think, "Well, that was not a good thing."

JN: And your mother probably protected you.

LK: Well, yes, she did. When she said, "We're going on a vacation," it just made us all really excited. I mean in those days, just to take a ferry was a special event. And I, and so we're gonna go on the ferry to Seattle and then not only that, we're gonna get on a train. Somehow she knew we would be taking a train or a bus. And even those two modes of transportation were special to, to me, anyway. So it was exciting and something to look forward to. And I don't make a very good responder to someone who's looking for something touching or earth-shattering when they talk to me because it isn't how I remember it at all. It was almost like, like a vacation.

JN: Well, this is from a seven-year-old, so this is valuable.

LK: Uh-huh, it is. That's from... I was a small child who was pretty protected.

JN: So, do you, do you remember anything about the reaction, in light of the fact that your mom probably protected you, when there was the exclusion order where you had to leave Bainbridge Island? It was all part of this vacation, and there wasn't any sense of...

LK: I have to tell you that -- this may seem like, "Boy, you sure take a long time to learn," but when Snow Falling on Cedars was being filmed and we were extras, and that last scene is when we're all on that ferry dock and -- it was an actual ferry that actually left the dock -- and we're all on the dock, standing and looking at the dock get smaller and smaller. And all of a sudden I thought, "You know, this is how... I wonder how my mama felt." I mean, 'cause she didn't know she was gonna ever get to go back. It was obvious, but until then, it really got to me that I thought, "Oh my goodness. She just had four kids and she didn't know where my dad... how my dad was gonna fare." And, and I really thought that she really did well or I was really dumb that I didn't... I mean, it really got to me that I, that here this is just part of a movie and we're just sitting there. And, yeah, it got to me then that they really, she really did do... was protecting, protective of me and of all of us. In a way, that's when I think, oh... even now with my own children, I felt like I should let them know what's really going on. And I think, "Oh, I should learn from that," that children don't need to know everything. Anyway, that's when I really thought, "Oh, they really did go through a lot."

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.