<Begin Segment 27>

TI: Okay, I'm going to switch gears a little bit, because I just wanted to have you talk a little bit about your family. So how did you meet your husband?

BK: Through a friend.

TI: And when was this and where did you meet?

BK: We've been married fifty-nine years, sixty years.

TI: And so sixty years ago, this is 2010, so about 1950, early '50s?

BK: We got married in 1950.

TI: And how many children do you have?

BK: Four.

TI: And can you tell me the names of your children?

BK: Mary Ann is...

TI: Oh, you don't have to worry about the age, you could just tell me the names.

BK: Mary Ann is the oldest, then David and Sandy and Wesley.

TI: Good. Because you've talked about your children and everything, I just wanted to make sure we got that. And so before I ask Jill if she has any more questions, I just wanted to ask you, is there anything else that we've left out? Is there a question or something that you'd like to answer, anything else that we should ask?

BK: Most places I go or to groups that I belong to, I just say, I mean, "Why aren't we spreading the word that we're here?" It bothers me that... you know, like we tell our friends that, "If you want to know about your mother-in-law's oral history, all you have to do is go to the Sac State library." And they don't even know about it. So we need to, you know, when we do projects like this, I mean, everybody should know, not just the Japanese. And that bothers me a lot.

TI: And so I'm going to see if Jill has any other questions.

JS: No, but you talked about, when we took a break, you were talking about that you have now great-grandchildren.

BK: Yeah.

JS: And what do you hope that your great-grandchildren will know about their family history?

BK: I hope as they grow older, that they would take little bit more interest in my heritage, my... because our oldest great-granddaughter is fourteen, and she doesn't know... well, my daughter doesn't know too much either so maybe, you know. So one day, yeah, to my great-granddaughter, when you get name tags with pictures on, I cut out all the pictures and I sent it to her, and I told her -- 'cause she likes to do crafts and stuff -- I said, "Grandma's sending you these so you can make a collage of your last name." So she'll know what her last name looks like in Japanese. And so as she grows older, because I give her things Japanese, I give her t-shirts with Japanese.

JS: And this is the grand-, great-granddaughter that lives in Colorado Springs?

BK: No, she lives, she lives here.

JS: Oh, okay.

BK: Yeah. And my nieces and nephews lived in Colorado Springs, so they get, if I send them t-shirts or anything, they get things written in Japanese. To let them know that their grandparents or their parents aren't telling you because their parents are, Yuriko is half-Japanese and half-white, and her husband is black. But I said, "You're still part of Japanese, so you need to..." so I send her those kind of things.

JS: So tell me more about the book that your son wants you to write and that you'd like to write.

BK: I told my kids that I've been wanting to write this book for over forty years, and mostly about my life in camp. So I said, "I'm gonna title it, 'Four Concentration Camps.'" And the second daughter says, "Oh, that's great," because she understands a little bit more because she's interested. But my older daughter, she could care less. She said, "I'll edit it for you," because she's an English major.

JS: Good. So do you like to write? Have you started?

BK: Not really. Oh, I used to like to write essays in Japanese at Japanese school. [Laughs] But I just feel that it's something that I should do even if it just reaches my family. 'Cause a lot of people don't know how camp was. And see, that's why I'm here. I have a real good friend who's, I always call her "half-Japanese" because she takes Japanese school classes, she takes ikebana and things Japanese, she takes in exchange students from Japan. And so we talk a lot. And she said, "I know about it because I'm interested. But you guys don't let anybody else know." I mean, you people as Sansei, do you think we tell enough people about what's going on?

TI: I think we have to do a much better job of telling more people. So I think that's part of why we're collecting these stories, so that we can share these with many more people. So I think, and that's why we're so thankful that you're willing to spend the time talking with us and being videotaped. So thank you so much.

BK: Oh, you're welcome.

JS: Thank you.

<End Segment 27> - Copyright (c) 2009 Densho and Preserving California's Japantowns. All Rights Reserved.