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RD: Okay, so finally, what would you like the younger generation to take away from what you're telling us?

KS: You mean all the younger generations of our country?

RD: Yes.

KS: Oh, that's a hard question to answer. That's a heavy question. [Laughs]

RD: Well, you can start over again if you like.

KS: Well, they should understand that to be a victim of prejudice... first of all, you shouldn't victimize anybody because of race, color and creed. But I would say in our imperfect society, and human beings being what we are, we all have our ego-centric nature and our identity, racially, and it's hard to expand beyond that to try to treat others equally who are different from you in ethnicity and in culture. That's a difficult thing to do. But since America's made up of so many ethnic groups, race, color and creed, this is the only country in the world that really had to face this, to really, you know, e pluribus unum, we had to all come together as Americans. We're all from, people are from all different parts of the world, made up our country. So now I can say now, at my age today, that there was a gradual evolution into integration slowly, as we look back on American history, it's slowly being integrated, ever so slowly. But intermarriage I think has helped a lot in breaking up of these racial differences, because what's intermarriage anyway but breaking up racial differences, right?

RD: Good, I like that. Anything you want to say?

KS: About what?

RD: About anything that we haven't covered. We have all your stories from Santa Anita, but if there's anything in particular you'd like to address? Because remember this is for the museums, too.

Off camera: Do you think your parents did a good job of hiding the fact that you were being so discriminated against from you because you were children? I mean, they obviously knew what was going on.

KS: Well, my parents' generation, the Japanese culture is "don't make trouble, stay in the background, don't be a showoff, be respected, respectable, study hard, don't do anything wrong." That was very important in Japanese culture. My parents never spoke of racial prejudice or being prejudiced against, they never mentioned that at all to any of us kids.

RD: What did they tell you about why you were in the camp?

KS: I never asked her and she never told me, but I believe she felt like we all did, we were all victims. [Laughs] She probably had the same question I did: "Why were we?" but the reason was obviously that we were of Japanese ancestry, that's why we were being shipped inland and treated with a lot of caution because of our ethnicity. We look like the enemy.

RD: How did your parents rebuild their lives?

KS: Well, when we got released from camp and we ended up at the Lomita air strip, there were jobs being offered from the government office there. And they were menial jobs working out in the field picking beans and such. And I remember going out to the field with my father picking beans, stoop labor all day. That was the first time I ever worked physical labor, eight hours out in the field. And I'll never forget that because it was so physically hard on me that I decided then and there that I'll never do this kind of work again. And that was the incentive I needed to get out of college, go to school and get out of college. [Laughs] That's all I needed was that one day out in the field. Oh, that almost killed me.

RD: Hard work for a former juvenile delinquent, wasn't it?

KS: Wasn't ready for that work. It almost killed me.

RD: So how did you make it to college?

KS: Well, let's see. From Lomita air strip, there was a big flower grower named Fred C. King incorporated. And he needed permanent workers on his huge flower ranches around the Torrance area, Torrance, Redondo Beach area in Gardena. And so he built a little trailer camp for twelve Japanese families, of which we were one of the twelve families. So we moved from the Lomita air strip into this trailer camp right off of Torrance Boulevard there between Redondo Beach and Torrance. And there I started my first year as a freshman was at Narbonne High School in Lomita where we were placed at the Lomita air strip. And then from there we went to the Fred C. Caine trailer camp, I started my second year at Redondo Union High School. And then my third and fourth year at Torrance High School. And by then, my parents were working out in the field for Fred C. Caine flower ranch. And then I started El Camino college, and then we moved next to a Japanese nursery and my parents worked at the nursery. We rented a house next to the nursery, and I went to El Camino college there while they were, they wanted me to get an education, so they basically were putting me through school.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2010 Raechel Donahue and Garrett Lindemann and Densho. All Rights Reserved.