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SY: And as far as you know, your father's reason for coming here, are you aware of any particular reason?

KS: Well, the reason I got from my father was that he was able, he thought he was gonna be able to make a better living. In Japan, well, the thing that they comment was that Japan is so filled with people, there isn't any open land to really start something new. So they, a lot of the, some of the, shall we say, kids ventured out outside of Japan to make a new life for themselves.

SY: And farming was something he knew?

KS: Farming was something he knew.

SY: From the family.

KS: 'Cause he, in Gifu the family is farmers, basically. Though they're influential, they practically control the town in Gifu, they're sheriffs and mayors and all that, and I think the basic family is farmers in that general region.

SY: And the, and did he have siblings, then, that he left behind?

KS: He left siblings behind, brothers and sisters and cousins and uncles. I see photographs of them periodically, but I couldn't identify. The only one that I know that has gone back from here is my sister, and visited and stayed with the family for a week or so at a time.

SY: So now, as far as your, the order of your family, you were the firstborn, correct?

KS: I wasn't exactly the firstborn. The firstborn was a sister that died at birth, and that child, I think, I don't know the exact age or time period, but I assume that she was not much more than a year, year and a half between her birth and my coming. And then I was born, then my brother two years later, or almost two years later, then my sister almost two years later. Then there was another sister that was born, and she died at birth. And I know my father was trying to do the delivery on that one because we, at that time, did not have funds to get a doctor, or we were too far out in the field to call a doctor for an emergency, and in the course of trying to give, make child birth, the child died at birth time. So that, I was conscious then, I was enough, I remember that scene.

SY: So watching as that happened.

KS: I didn't watch the delivery itself, but I watched all the blood and all this other, washing of the child and all that sort of thing. But at that time it, it just, it was just the subject matter I was looking at.

SY: So your father, then, probably worked as, for someone else doing the farming?

KS: Mainly he was a, the head of the farm. I mean, he leased the land and he ran the farm, and he had hired Mexican hands to do the, a lot of the field work, and my mother was doing part of the field work as well because he didn't have the kind of financial ability to really do the job. He did the best he could to pay and worked to hire hands, and because it was limited funds, my mother was also part of the hired hands to do the planting and fixing and picking. And I remember having the tomato packing shed where the tomatoes were brought in down the chute, and we would stand at the end of the chute, munch away at the damaged and all that stuff while the other hands were packing the tomatoes into tomato boxes.

SY: So he kind of supervised?

KS: He, basically yeah, head of the farm. He was the supervisor of the farm.

SY: And you and your brother, did you work too?

KS: We were too young. We were like four, three or four years old. [Laughs]

SY: So how did he end up, did he at some point leave that, leave Brawley?

KS: He moved around in the Brawley, Coachella Valley, Imperial Valley and that general area, all throughout that southern area, then the last incident was shortly after the third, the last baby was born. As I recall, this was coming towards the end of that farm, I mean the season, and he was in a position, as I understood later, that he couldn't lease or start another farm at that time because this, it was just at the outbreak of the war, or near that. And we saw these B-38s and stuff flying through and buzzing the area and all that. But my father, I guess through whatever was going on at that particular time, couldn't lease anymore land and start another farm. This is the reason he went to Costa Mesa to a friend of, friend of ours, my father's, house that, he had a little house on the cliff of, at Costa Mesa just looking down over the beach. And that's where, we moved there and about a few weeks, a few months -- I don't know the time period -- is when my father disappeared that night and then my mother had a breakdown that day, or that night or the following day. And the people that owned the property there had gathered up, meaning my mother and my, the siblings, and he made arrangements to drop us off at, as I understood now, it was in North Hollywood or Hollywood area, there was a Shonien there, Japanese orphanage. He dropped us off there, and then I don't know whatever happened to my mother, but they tell me later that she was taken to the San Bernardino or that area's sanitarium, and that's where she stayed.

SY: Let's back up just a little, because you were in Costa Mesa only a few months, your father was working at that time as a farmer?

KS: No, he was at interim. He just closed out the farm that he finished, shall we say, delivering his produce and stuff.

SY: Last...

KS: And that was the last of that.

SY: And because he had a friend in Costa Mesa...

KS: He had a friend, had a place to go to, to sit out the situation, trying to get organized to see what he can do next, is when the war situation, I guess, was playing a part, him being able to progress into whatever he needed to do. And they just picked him up at night. I understand that it was sometime, midnight. It was obviously after we went to bed, 'cause when we get up he wasn't there. [Laughs]

SY: And you had no idea what happened to him?

KS: I didn't, we didn't have any idea what happened to him. When he dropped, when they dropped us off at the orphanage, we still didn't know what was going on. Then we, then Mother disappeared. And not, I mean, these people couldn't explain to a child what we're doing to your parents. We were just taken to the orphanage and, "You're gonna be here for a while." So the, and best we can understand.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.