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FK: It sounds like your family, your older siblings, were leaving kind of like one at a time from concentration camp. Was there a special thing they had to go through to leave concentration camp or was it just something they could just do?

FK: They had to have -- I read up on that -- but, and I do know that they were... they had to be sponsored by somebody outside of camp. And my sister Massie was, and her husband were sponsored first, and they became, my sister was a housemaid in Chicago, and then her husband went out and found a job, but he also did all of the maintenance work outside and so forth. And then once they were, once they were out there, then the rest of the family found it a little bit easier to go, to go to Chicago. And so then we ended up in, I think in the south side of Chicago, and we lived in a little tiny apartment. And my, and of course, my dad had, my dad went to work as a custodian, I don't know where, but he had to work at night. And of course, Chicago at that time was very, very cold. It was in the wintertime, and he decided he didn't like the cold, and he didn't like the heat. And that just, he was very, very determined he was going to come back to Bainbridge Island, and of course nobody wanted to come back because they were all settled in their jobs and so forth. And it was, so again, it was very difficult for my brother, but he, he came through and he came home and took care of the family.

FK: Now, as older people were leaving, the younger adults were leaving camp, how did that affect the camp as far as young men and young women leaving?

SK: I really don't know. I just... I think because I was too young to understand that, I just, I just remember when the Bainbridge people left, I was, I was devastated. And of course, some of the kids used to say, "Ha, ha, ha, we get to move and you don't get to." And of course, that didn't do well for me, but again, like I say, time and new people made the difference.

FK: Now, a time came when you were the only one left with your parents, is that true?

SK: Yes.

FK: And how was that for you?

SK: I, we had a lot of room in the house, of course. And I got to... it seemed like my mother was always after me making sure that I learned to do housecleaning and things of this sort, because that's the job of the women, you know, and I had to be responsible. But she, I felt that I had... school was fine, all my friends were, I had good friends. Of course, we used to fight, but we used to enjoy our times together. I think... one comment, well, we were, we decided that we wanted to have a party. There were about four or five girls in the block, we were all different ages, of course. One or two were younger than me, and then there were a couple that were several years older. So, but there were five of us, and so we decided one day that wanted to have a party. And so every day when we went to the mess hall to have our lunch, we would pick up the Kool-Aid, teaspoon of Kool-Aid and put it in a little container and bring it home. And so when we saved enough Kool-Aid, we said, "Okay, it's time for our party." And then we, I think we bought some Jell-O at the canteen or something. Anyway, we made the Jell-O and had it stored in the refrigerator at the mess hall. Well, one of the workers there said, "Oh, here's some Jell-O," and of course, she shared it with the people that worked there. So when we went to get our Jell-O, it was gone. We were devastated. [Laughs] And I remember all five of us were in tears over the fact that our Jell-O was taken away from us. And so when they heard about it, they promptly put something together for us, and so we had our nice party afterwards. But that was, that was the one... I remember that incident, and the traumas of youngsters.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.