<Begin Segment 15>

JD: What was it like when you got back to your home? What do you remember about that?

FK: I don't remember much other than that it was really big, you know, compared to... and everything looked really green. I remember my dad, when the ferry was pulling up to the dock said, "Oh, no, we caught the wrong ferry. This is Vashon," and I'm going, "Oh," but he was just kidding. But I remember everything looking so big and so green. you know, and... well, the house itself was different because nothing like a barrack, which is all I really knew from the last three and a half years. And, and it, it was probably different to be eating with a, as a family in one room rather than in a big mess hall. And I do remember going into first grade at old Eagledale school... McDonalds School, it was called, I guess. And language really wasn't a big problem for me 'cause we spoke mostly English in concentration camp. So I don't remember anything very unusual other than that I had this faint feeling in me through all the years I went to school on the island, wishing I was white and thinking that I was really at a disadvantage not being white. And I think I tried everything I could to be as white as I could be, all the way through high school. And I don't think I realized until I was in college that doesn't work, you know. 'Cause somebody who didn't know me would come up to me and know in an instant that I wasn't white, and so it wasn't working. So I had to deal with that. But I don't think I dealt with that 'til I was in college.

JD: Was that because, do you think that was because of the sense that you had of your whole family being shamed and being put in a concentration camp because you looked Japanese and then...

FK: Yeah. I think that was part of it. But also I never knew the history of the Japanese on the island. I never knew that we were here since 1883 and that we weren't just interlopers or newcomers or... I never knew that we planted the first strawberries or that we, that there were forty-five families on the island here of Japanese descent, and out of the three thousand people that lived here, there were three hundred of us that lived here. I didn't know any of that. And I didn't... and any time we studied Japan, it was a foreign country. You know, it was, it was like you, you're American, but you're really a foreigner, and that you just don't fit in. And obviously it wasn't popular for our parents to want us to know our Japanese heritage at that time. They felt, you know, we needed to fit in. And, and try not to, try not to emphasize our Japanese background. So we lost a lot of that culture, I think. And even before the war when they burnt a lot of the stuff and, or threw 'em down the outhouse hole because they were afraid of what the FBI would think of them if they were caught with Japanese things. So, so I distinctly remember laying in bed sometimes, crying to myself because I was Japanese, and wondering why in the world I had to be Japanese.

JD: Did you try wearing tall shoes and slick your hair back and...

FK: [Laughs] No, I was too subtle for that. I just figured I was white. [Laughs]

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.