<Begin Segment 11>

JS: So what do you remember about that, about the evacuation and Pearl Harbor, the bombing of Pearl Harbor?

BK: You know, when you're that young, you really don't think about it. And I, again, I would go to Mom and ask why we're leaving, and she would try to explain. And then I'd ask my kid sister, I says, "Aren't you excited? I mean, we're finally leaving town." We'd never left Isleton other than to go to the doctor in Courtland. So I said, "We get to go on a bus and we get to go out of town." But it didn't bother her one way or the other. And then like I said, being younger than I am, maybe...

JS: So what do you remember, like how was the store taken care of during the evacuation? Did you have to sell all the things, did somebody --

BK: Yeah. I remember my brothers boarding up the front windows. And so I asked, "Why are you boarding up the front windows? Nobody can see inside anymore." And he said, "To protect it from vandalism." And then, well, by that time, the shoe store was gone, so she just had the rooms.

JS: And so the property, you were leasing the property from somebody?

BK: We were paying mortgage.

JS: You were paying mortgage?

BK: Yeah. I didn't know what a mortgage was until my mother said, when we were in camp, and they only made sixteen dollars a month, I mean, how do you pay a mortgage? And so we lost everything.

JS: Oh, I see.

BK: We lost our new car, we lost our new refrigerator, we lost everything. I think the thing that hurt the most was when we were in Rohwer, Arkansas, Mr. Wilson, the janitor, was taking care of our belongings at the Japanese school. We stored everything at the Japanese school. And he said he can no longer take care of it because of too much vandalism. And then he sent us this black trunk that my dad made, and that's where we had all our Nihongi and obis and stuff. And then when he came all the way to Arkansas, there was a dirty Kotex. [Laughs]

JS: Oh, it was empty?

BK: Even empty.

JS: So do you remember the evacuation and where we had to meet?

TI: Excuse me, Jill, can we go back? I just want to... so the trunk was, everything was stolen, is that what you were saying?

BK: Yeah.

TI: So it was all stolen, and what was left was this dirty Kotex.

BK: Yeah.

TI: Do you recall what it, the reaction of your parents when they saw that?

BK: My mother always said you have to be thankful that you're healthy, you have to be thankful that they give us a roof over our heads. And she never said gaman, but she just said, "Be thankful for what you have, and you make the best of it." So even in camp, when I went to camp, I took dancing lessons, I took craft lessons, and I told my friends, I says, "How come you guys don't do this?" And I don't know if they were mad because they got sent to camp, or they weren't interested. I don't know. But even to this day, they really don't want to talk about it.

TI: How about your reaction? When you saw what they had stolen? Did you have a reaction?

BK: I didn't know what a Kotex was. [Laughs]

TI: But then you knew that it was stolen, though, all that materials were stolen.

BK: Yeah.

TI: Do you remember how you felt about that? Were you surprised?

BK: No. My mom said, "It's gone," yeah. She never made anything... never taught us to feel bad about things. Not to me, anyway. I'm sure she had a lot of bad days. So you know, like in camp, she grew a vegetable garden, and she ordered material from Montgomery Ward, I think, and made our clothes. But... and I didn't realize when she passed away, she was only seventy. And then I look at myself now and then I says, "Gosh, she was young." But at that time, I guess, you don't see the age difference. But other things that she taught me, I tried to teach my kids. Like I said, our second daughter, we never had those Girl's Day dolls, so we had little kokeshi dolls. Then she would put those out on the piano and then we would put senbei. So even to this day, if she's home -- she lives in Canada -- and if she comes home and if it's Girl's Day, she put the dolls out, and then she always bows and asks if it's okay. So I tried to teach her the things my mother taught me. And you do with what you have.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright (c) 2009 Densho and Preserving California's Japantowns. All Rights Reserved.