<Begin Segment 8>

SY: And do you remember, I mean, can you think about the unpleasant things?

KS: Well, the unpleasant was, like I said, I hated to be called Gopher, and that was, that would always turn me off completely. Just couldn't stand it. [Laughs]

SY: So it all had to do with other kids, pretty much.

KS: It had to do with the other kids.

SY: Not so much supervision or...

KS: Well, supervision, we had pleasant side on supervision, that one lady. Again, I said I can remember her but I don't remember her name or anything else. She, to me, was like having a second mother. And I recall her, the feeling of her being around, but I don't recall, I wish I knew, remember and followed up on keeping, maintaining a memory of who they actually were and the names and all that. I didn't. I was ignorant in that sense and never followed up on a lot of 'em. Some of it was inadvertently I ran into 'em after camp, in downtown First Street here, and those kids were there at the orphanage and they happened to have their family here also. We run into them and there was inadvertently association there, which wasn't very happy at some times either. It was a carryover from Manzanar. [Laughs]

SY: And at the time, do you remember thinking, "I wonder what's happened to my mother and father?"

KS: I consciously don't remember that. And there was word that my father was, was back in camp, and we never were really curious enough to find out where. And over a little period of time, we found out he was at Block 2 in such and such room, and we got permission, brother and I got permission to walk that distance to Block 2 and locate him. And we visited one day, and then I guess in about two, a week or two later we visited again. But it was fascinating. My father had made, out of wood, a, what we call a truck with a bed on the back, with a fence, wood fence and all, and he made the engine. He was taken pride, he says, "You can turn the wheel and see the pistons go." And all out of wood, and the doors open, the steering wheel turns and all that. I mean, he, it was, in that situation it was quite an intricate toy, so to speak. But you couldn't use it as a toy 'cause it will break down. And then another project he was doing over this period of time, he made a replica of his house in Japan, with the sliding panels and all that and the storage for the sliding panels. It was a two story house and the tile, the roof tiles, every little piece was cut out on, from black tar paper. At least I think it was black tar paper. And I thought, god, it's, it was beautiful. It's his home, all the sliding panels, inside, you look inside the house, you see all the rooms in there, and you could see where all the shoji and the things go in to make the room. And I thought, the thing is, at that time I didn't value that. And when we got out of camp that was one of the few, couple or few things that came with us out of camp. But it was a headache 'cause there was no room for that kind of thing. And we were at, when we finally had to leave Gardena and we came back to First Street to the Toyo Hotel, it was still with us. And I said, "Somewhere along the line this is gettin' in our way." When we finally moved to Crocker Street, it was an old house that we rented, my father rented, and in the attic, it was just an empty attic, open space between the roof and the ceiling, so we stuck it all up in there, out of the way. And we never retrieved it. And I think about it to this day, says, "That's a shame to let that thing go." 'Cause when they, when we moved out of Crocker Street, after we, the buildings were torn down, along with everything that was in there.

SY: What a shame. But he showed this to you when you visited him.

KS: Yes. He was, he was proud of it. I mean, it was detail-ish, everything was in fine, minute detail of his actual home. I assume it was his home. And all the roof tiles and everything, you would, he took pride in the fact that all these things, everything worked.

SY: Wow. Talented, he's very talented. So this was one of the two times both your brother, your sister and you actually got to see --

KS: I don't recall if my sister went, 'cause she was still pretty young. My brother by that time was about, about five years old. So we were taking a slow trip. [Laughs]

SY: And he didn't explain, did your father explain, was he not good at explaining what was happening?

KS: You know, we had, we never got into depth of any kind of conversation. We had a, we became a situation with a language barrier. It was more dominant at that time, as we were associating with the orphanage kids, no Japanese was even spoken, so we had lost hearing a lot of that. Because back in the farm we didn't communicate all that much either, so as we grew up, unfortunately, the conversation never got in any particular depth as to what was going on. It's more or less just say hi and good morning. "I'm hungry." [Laughs]

SY: So he never really learned English.

KS: No. My mother, one of few words, that's about it. My father probably knew a little more English than my mother, which wasn't very much at all. And so they really didn't acquire the English language, and there was no way we can communicate.

SY: So you did find out later what happened to your father when he was picked up? Did you find out?

KS: No. I never conversed, I never conversed with him on that, 'cause there was no point. I can't converse with him, I couldn't converse with him. When I did get, when I got married at later years, and I don't recall if my father was still alive... I don't recall if my father was still alive when I married this woman that was very versed in Japanese. So she was able to communicate, get a lot of the story out of the family that I wasn't able to. But she passed away too, so it was, what she told me, what he related, I kind of vaguely remember, but it wasn't an important factor. It was just an added piece of some point of interest.

SY: So, but you did at some point find out that he, it was in fact the FBI that picked him up that night?

KS: Well, that was not coming from this conversation. There was a conversation long later, much, much later, and between my brother and sister, we kind of talked and kind of briefly said, "This is what happened." 'Cause he had more details on that event than I did, and then he kind of filled in.

SY: I see. So no firsthand, it was just through your brother, who maybe found out, he didn't really say how he found out?

KS: No, I never asked, I never questioned it. It was not a fact of highly importance to us, in a sense that it was an event that took place and that's it.

SY: You were kids.

KS: I was a kid.

SY: Yeah, yeah.

KS: It wasn't important.

SY: Right.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.