<Begin Segment 15>

SY: So when you went to school, and was there a separation between the kids who lived in these hotels and other kids? Or was it all...

KS: Not necessarily. The relationship with the other kids in the hotel was sort of nonexistent, I'll put it that way. We never related as friends. Just because we lived in the same hotel we were all facing, to a degree, an embarrassing situation as far as, we had nothing to show off. So I recall the, couple of the older kids had some relations, or tried to develop some relationship with some of the girls that lived in the hotel, I mean a family of some girls. There was joking going on, but that's over my head. [Laughs]

SY: It didn't bother you, or did you have feelings like, "Oh, I'm living in this hotel and..."

KS: In the depth of things, there was nothing to brag about, so that's, it's what it is and there was nothing you could do to brag about it, and you can't... you know, says, "Yeah, I live in a hotel." Big deal.

SY: But did you make friends at school that were living in...

KS: We, I guess this is where the past relationship or non-relationship has influenced my involvement in society as not really making any outward relationship with anybody that I have dealt with. I have my own problems, you have yours, I don't need to mix the two kind of deal. I help you out, that's the extent of it. Let's go. You go that way, I go this way.

SY: So kind of like you were always a loner.

KS: I'm always a loner.

SY: And you grew up that way.

KS: I grew up that way. That's the only way I know how to handle myself.

SY: Interesting. So it started way, way young.

KS: It is a, that's why I said the influence you have between the ages of, let's say, three or four years old to about eight or nine years old, that influence in there is extremely important of what you develop into at a later life. If you're socially quite active at those ages you will continue to be socially active, but if you're in an isolated situation totally, like we were, you maintain that isolation throughout, you will stretch out and do what is necessary to get the, get a cooperation going, but that's the extent of it. You don't get emotionally tied up with them. That's the reason I never go out, like people go out and have games and have a social event and always have it year after year after year, month after month, I can't do that. I'll do it this one day, I enjoy it one day. I won't do it the next year if I don't feel up to it. [Laughs]

SY: That's understandable. So is your brother like that too?

KS: Yeah.

SY: You're very much alike that way.

KS: Well, we both grew up in the same conditions, so basically...

SY: Sure.

KS: And he had, I guess he had a little more awareness of, self-consciousness as to his position in society and what he is faced with in society and the fact that he can't go out and buy whatever he wanted 'cause he didn't have the money. He says, and I remember him saying before I went to the army, says, "I refuse to ever be poor again." And that was his motivation to continue on with the education and everything, so forth, so on, and get as high in a position as he can.

SY: I see. So when, at the time you graduated from high school, so you spent, you were still living in that hotel?

KS: I was living in... no, when I graduated from high school, when I graduated from Lafayette, I mean junior high school, I was living in a hotel. I went to Roosevelt High School and I was still in that hotel. Take the bus -- or let me think, let me think clearly. I was in a hotel, I went to Crocker Street, it's from Crocker Street I graduated Lafayette Junior High School, and from there I went to Roosevelt High School.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.