<Begin Segment 5>

FK: It sounded like your friends, your former classmates and stuff, helped you get back into the swing of things at school. During that time when you returned, did you face any discrimination or things that bothered you?

SK: The only thing that I remember was a couple of incidences. One of my neighbors up the street who was a good friend of mine had a birthday party, and she invited this other friend, but she says, "I can't invite you because you're Japanese." And I thought, oh, that was awful; I was very disappointed. The other thing, I thought, "Well, okay, I'm going to get into some of the activities for kids on the island." Well, I wanted to join the Girl Scouts -- I had been in the scouting program before the war -- and then so I went up and asked if I could get back into scouting and they said... I forgot what she said. She says, "Oh, I'm sorry, we've got too many in our group," or something to this effect. She made some kind of an excuse, and I thought, okay, that's too bad. So then I said, I asked the kids in the class, I said, "I wonder if I can join the Rainbow Girls," that was a Masonic group, but the girls used to do a variety of things and they used to have fun. And so I said, so I asked one of my classmates and she said, she asked her mother and her mother made some phone calls and then her mother was told by headquarters that no, I could not join.

So there were three incidents there. Other than that, I didn't run into any discrimination, really, on the island. I think, I guess there were a couple of things. I guess I couldn't go, I never got to go to any of the high school dances or things of this sort because of who I was, at least that's what I thought the problem was, but I don't know. So that's, as far as discrimination, no, I really didn't get into too much of that. And the islanders on the whole were very, very nice to us.

FK: You said that when your dad was taken away it was especially hard on your brother Tyke. Do you remember how he reacted or the rest of your sisters or you reacted when your father was arrested by the FBI, how you reacted to that?

SK: I was, I felt badly, but it was, it was my brother and my sisters that it hit the hardest, and I think it was my brother especially because he ended up being in charge of the family at a young age.

FK: He was about how old then?

SK: Huh?

FK: How old was he at that time?

SK: He was about... let's see, I was twelve, so he's fifteen years... about twenty-six, twenty-seven years old, so that was quite a burden on him. But he was, he tried very hard to, he did everything he could to help support the family before the war. But when the war hit, that just, that just hit him very hard. And I guess he was quite bitter about that whole situation.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.