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JD: Now, when you were in Minidoka, was your dad still in the Justice camp, or was he...

FK: He left... they let him out of Missoula and I found some records at Suitland, the National Archives branch for the internment, that said he had a hearing and that he said he had been arrested for having dynamite in his barn and a .22 rifle, and that's all the paper said. And, and that they let him go to come back to join us in Manzanar. And then when we transferred to Minidoka, he... you know, they decided they would let people leave concentration camp and go back east or to the Midwest, but you couldn't go back to the West Coast. So if you had a sponsor to work someplace or go to school someplace, they could do that. And my dad, according to my mom, was trying really hard to have the whole family move to Denver or wherever. And my mom didn't want to go because she said to him, "Well, how are you gonna feed us?" And he really didn't have a clue, and, but he just wanted the whole family to get out of there. So, eventually he got a letter of recommendation from one of the Friedlanders, who owned the jewelry stores that he worked at, and, and went back to Chicago to go to watch repair school. 'Cause his dream was always to have his own jewelry store, and he figured if he knew how to repair watches he could do that, so he went back to Chicago to watch repair school. So I don't remember much about my dad being in concentration camp at all. He was probably just in Manzanar for a few months and Minidoka for a few months and after that, I don't remember him. I know he did come back to pick us up to bring us home, but that's... that's all I remember, really.

JD: But did he get a complete training, certification, in watch repair, so he could...

FK: Yeah, yeah. And then when he came back, and when we came back, he actually borrowed money from the Friedlanders to open his own jewelry store. He started a small one on Yesler and then he eventually, according to my brother-in-law, Lilly's husband Joe, who worked for him, Mr. Friedlander came into his store once and said, "Boy, this is sure small. You need a bigger place," and encouraged him to... and gave him more money to, to start a bigger one under the Bush Hotel, 617 Jackson, and that's where he was for a long time. Frank's Jewelry, 617 Jackson.

JD: It sounds as if it must have been pretty hard, extra hard, for your mom to be in the camp without your dad.

FK: I would think so. Yeah, I would think so. And, maybe that's why I was crying all the time. I mean, that's a good excuse, anyway. [Laughs] But I'm sure it was hard for my mom, and I think when I listen to my older sister Lilly now, and she was there from age seven to almost ten, and I think she took a lot of the responsibility as far as looking after my sister Frances and myself and my sister Jane. She was the one that kind of was an auxiliary mom, I guess. Yeah.

JD: Did the, that experience of being in the camp... your mom and the kids in the camp but your dad mostly not, did that affect how things were after the camp? Or was that... did they just get back together and kind of try and carry on their lives?

FK: Yeah. You know, once we came back it was... he commuted to town every day except on Sundays, and he worked on the farm. But I don't, I don't know how, you know, as far as their marriage and stuff, I don't know how it affected their marriage. It probably affected it to some degree, but it was, it was like home again. Except my dad was, was... always had a big temper, and always would be angry a lot of times. But he, he hard a heart of gold, couldn't refuse anybody. And that was probably the problem for my mother. [Laughs] He would come home with complete strangers sometimes without saying anything, or... even on the way back from concentration camp, there were the six of us crowded into this little coupe car and this guy wanted a ride, so he said, "Okay." [Laughs] So, he was just that type of person. It was just very hard to, for him to turn anybody down. But he... but I know he was bitter about some of the things that went on in his life. So... so he was also angry at the same time.

JD: Do you know if he considered himself to be successful in what he'd wanted to do when he was a young man?

FK: Gosh, I don't know. I think he had a tough life. I think he had a stepfather, and according to what he had told me, he came home from school one day and his stepfather said, "Well, what did you learn in school today?" and he said, "Nothing." So his stepfather said, "Well then why are you going to school?" So he quit. And then he couldn't get along with his stepfather, so he just left home and started working as a ship's cabin boy and did all these odd jobs and kind of drifted around doing things. I know he worked as a chauffeur for a while and when he got the job for being a chauffeur he decided he'd better go get a driver's license. So, he's just a type of person who would... things would come up and he'd just take care of it, you know, he'd just do it. And... but he only went through sixth grade, so... but my mom only went through sixth grade, too.

And my mom is, is really interesting because she was the first born. And my grandfather decided he couldn't get ahead in this new country with a daughter, so he shipped her back to Japan with a, with strangers, to be raised by an uncle. So she was raised in Japan 'til she was, oh, I think almost ten or twelve. And, and by that time she had one brother and four sisters when she finally came back to the United States with them. And she said she went into the first grade on the island when she should have been in sixth grade because she didn't know how to speak English. But she said by the end of the year she was up to sixth grade. She went to Olympic grade school on Tolo Road. But she said after the sixth grade, I mean, after that one year of school, her father said to her, "You know, you're the oldest in the family, so I need help on the farm here so you're gonna have to help me on the farm." But she said... but he said, "When I go back to Japan, since you're the oldest, you're gonna help on the farm, I'll give you this farm." So, she just went through sixth grade, and then I guess in 1935 when he decided to go back to Japan and take his two youngest kids with him, he said to my mother, "You know, it wouldn't be fair for me to just give you this farm, so I'll just sell it to you and your husband for what I paid for it." So she said, so she said, "We paid five thousand dollars for this farm." And she's talking about this story around this table with all her other sisters and the second oldest sister said, "Oh, that's not what he paid for it." So he made a profit off my mother. [Laughs] So, I don't think she ever forgave him for that, besides being shipped off to Japan. So, but she's just, just that good business sense. She's just, you know, was one of the first to start irrigating on the island and first to grow the raspberries, one of the first to grow Christmas trees, and she just, just, with her sixth grade education, she just really knew what she was doing. So it just always amazed me that I got these two parents who just went through sixth grade and they both seemed smarter than I was and I, you know, went through college. I'm going, wow, it's more than just education that makes somebody educated.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.