<Begin Segment 23>

SY: Now, but I'm still trying to get back to, you must've done this kind of stuff when you were young, right? I mean, that was something that you must've, or it was a talent that you had. I mean, do you, because you didn't have that many possessions, right?

KS: No, I didn't have that many possessions, but I was always curious. And when you... of course, at that time there was limited, I'll say advanced knowledge of what the equipment was doing that you're curious about, but as the years went by, that was the key interest of learning as much as I can about how the camera works or how a motor works or how this does or how's the crystal radio thing work, you know? And you start to experiment for yourself, try to get a base knowledge on all these things. And one of the things that I had taken into myself as a basis of knowledge, if you can learn the fundamentals -- just like photography, you learn the fundamentals of all these little things, and you take the fundamentals and go to, like, taking a picture of the Canon barrel and getting all that, or you could take one light and take a picture of the auditorium just with that one light. These, but you do the fundamentals; you know that the light has so much exposure and if you move that light along at a certain rate the camera will never pick it up, but it would light up the wall that you're taking a picture of and expose it. So you expand from there. Everything I do is an expansion from the basics of, I have acquired.

SY: Do you feel like any of this you learned in school? Like did you pick up things in your education somewhere along the way that gave you...

KS: Not really. [Laughs] I had a very difficult time in education. Either I didn't quite grasp the instructor or they'd go through it too rapid. And I do that today, going through AutoCAD and all this stuff, attending class and they zip through that thing in four or five chapters, and I go out of that room spinning and not really knowing what happened, what's going on there. That's the reason I have a difficulty with that. But I have to sit down and analyze each segment. If I can just grasp the one questioned area that I may have that doesn't cover it in the conversation or doesn't cover it there, then I'm stuck with the rest of the stuff 'cause my mind is here. I'm trying to analyze what's there and everybody's already gone on to chapter three, and I'm still trying to figure this one out.

SY: Were you, what kind of student were you, then? I mean, like --

KS: I would say I wasn't a very good student. I mean, I got my A's and B's and stuff, but there were times I got my D's too, when I had an instructor I could not grasp.

SY: Did you notice anything different about going to school in camp versus going to school --

KS: The camp situation, I don't recall a thing that went in the class, I really don't.

SY: You remember just the name of the teacher.

KS: I just remember the name of the teacher, and I remember some bad incidents that took place, what the kids were doing to her and all that sort of thing. Like you know the teacher wearing a skirt and standing by the bench, and the other kid crawling under the bench and looking up her skirt, says, "You got black hair." [Laughs] She's a blonde. Says, "You got black hair."

SY: So you were always kind of a little rascally, all --

KS: Well I wasn't doing that.

SY: [Laughs] You remember it, though.

KS: I remember it.

SY: So there was not, you didn't feel like the competition was, was bad in camp? Or did it just not matter to you, your education?

KS: It didn't matter to me.

SY: Didn't really make an impression on you, never...

KS: That kind of thing and what went on in the class at that time, it didn't leave any impression on me. And when I was going through, let's say, even when I was at the farm, going through the Japanese school for, with this Japanese teacher that was there, I don't recall anything that took place within the class. I just know that I was there and going through a Japanese school and obviously I was learning hiragana and katakana and all that sort of thing. But I don't recall, it was too short a period, there was nothing that stayed with me. The only incident I could tell you that relates to that teacher is that I ran into, or we ran into that teacher here in L.A. several years later, long after the camp, and his family over here. We did have a short, brief encounter with each other, and got to know him a little bit more. And his son and his daughter and all that, I got to know them a little bit better too. 'Cause we, back then there was only, the kids were only, what, three, four, five years old, somewhere around there.

SY: But you hadn't remembered that. That's pretty amazing. And your, and like, do you have any feelings now about what that experience, as you look back on that whole camp experience, do you have --

KS: The camp experience?

SY: Yeah, do you have any feelings that it somehow either helped or, or hindered you in any way?

KS: As far as that goes, no. I have, right now I have no feelings as to whether the incident with the camp, what took place there, what I learned there... the only thing I can say as far as, as a whole picture, and this is something because I didn't have that training at home, and that is the table manners at the orphanage. That stuck in my head. [Laughs]

SY: That's good. That's very good.

KS: So it was one good thing that came out of there. [Laughs]

SY: Yeah. And how about, do you have any sense of what it did for your parents, what it did to your parents? Whether it was --

KS: It had no, as far as my point of view, it really had no effect or no, has no relationship to anything that took place, and it's almost like two different worlds. They weren't aware of what was going on there, and there's no connection there, absolutely. So we left one image, went to another image and we lived out that image, but there was not relationship between these two. In fact, there was no relationship of even reestablishing any contact between parent and them to find out how my, how the kids were at the time they were growing up. So there was no, there's no, as far as I know, there's no connection there. So there was no interest, as far as I know, there was no interest of what took place with my kids there at the orphanage.

SY: But your parents in particular, thinking back to where, what the effect it had on your own parents, do you feel that there was any?

KS: I imagine there was some effect on them, but I don't know. I never discussed it. We never discussed it and they never...

SY: You never sensed anything?

KS: No, there's no negative or other thing. They see the logic of what had taken place based on the explanation they gave them, that yeah, there were some Japanese that were enemies of the, enemies of the United States, and they can't pinpoint it. And then our question was, "Why would a three year old Japanese be a danger to the United States? Just because he's got a drop of Japanese blood?" I says, "Boy, the Japanese blood must have an awful strong situation going on there, the American people would be afraid of an infant."

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.