<Begin Segment 1>

HM: I guess I want you to introduce yourself and tell us a little about your family, who you are.

JK: Oh, I will answer whatever I can, but you know, like I told you before interviewing, why, I just came back from Japan and was on the island for only four years from 1938 to 1942 when we evacuated.

HM: I see. Now, what is your name and who are your parents and did you have any siblings?

JK: My name is Hideo Kino, but my hired people at that time couldn't pronounce my name so they called, start calling me Joe. That's how I got the Joe Hideo Kino in there.

HM: Then your parents, were they leasing the land or did you own it, or what was it with your farm land?

JK: Oh, you mean farming?

HM: Yes.

JK: Well, we owned that farm, you know, that place we were farming, but during the war, why, we just can't keep up with the taxes, so I think we lost by not paying the taxes for the place. And the people that we had hired, they were supposed to take care of it when we were gone, but I don't know, we didn't hear anything about it, and my dad was in the New Mexico at that time. And well, we can't, at that time, we can't converse with those people that many times, you know, because I'm not up to my English, like I am now, but during the four years that I was on Bainbridge Island, I went to school and after that, after school, I come home and do the farm work.

HM: Did you go to Bainbridge High School then?

JK: I went to Pleasant Beach Elementary School. And then 1944 -- no, not 1944, but 1940, I was in high school and freshman year, and I remember that when we were going high school at freshman time, myself and Akio Suyematsu on the lunchtime, we used to walk around the high school, you know, at the high school, and I met a lot of people that way.

HM: I see, so you had just returned from Japan then around your freshman year?

JK: Uh-huh, well you see I came back in 1938, spring of 1938, and I stayed in the immigration department for about four days before they let me go out because they have to check everything, you know, what kind of disease I have or what I brought from Japan and things like that.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.