<Begin Segment 22>

TI: And I'm curious, you've watched the JACL from the beginning, I'm trying to think how many years now, but it's a lot of years, lot of decades. What do you see in the future for the JACL?

JK: Well, it's pretty hard to tell except that we have a younger group of JACLers, and aside from the Japanese, there are a lot of Caucasians within the JACL, too. See, we have our national credit union here, and we have a lot of... of course, there's been a lot of intermarriage so that there's a, the younger generation of that group are quite active in the JACL. And in fact, they don't carry Japanese names. I didn't, I didn't know anything about this convention that's coming up in July.

TI: Okay, and then you mentioned the interracial. I mean, you married a Chinese American back in the early '40s. Did that ever present any problems?

JK: Just within our families. [Laughs]

TI: How so? How did it...

JK: Well, my sister-in-law resented it, and my folks accepted it after a while, but then they weren't too happy about it. No, it was just kind of a turmoil at the time, because at that time, see, Japan was at war with China, and we used to see Chinese walking around with a badge, said, "I am Chinese," on this badge, and they'd get knocked down, because they'd say, "Yeah, that's what they all say."

TI: I'm sorry, they would get knocked down so...

JK: No, I never, I was never molested by anyone.

TI: Okay. So that's, that's the end of my questions. Is there anything else that you'd like to say to finish off the interview?

JK: No, there's nothing that I could add to.

TI: Anything you'd like to say to your great-grandchildren when they get old enough to see this interview?

JK: Well, I haven't talked too much to the grandchildren. In fact, I haven't even talked to my own kids about, about my attitude or my actions within the Japanese community. I was fortunate, you might say, in that I acquired a lot of very, very good friends among the Junior Chamber of Commerce group that I belong to. And with that, with that group, we've cultivated a lot of good things, good relationships. And the strange part of that is that all the, just about all the fellows that I knew in the JACL, they had, their families are... their families are probably, well, like Kim knows a lot of the kids of the other families, but they never see each other because they're so far apart.

TI: Well, you've lived a very long and, I agree, a very good life. So thank you so much for agreeing to be interviewed.

JK: Well, I'm glad to be able to do what I can. I know it's very inadequate.

TI: No, this was, this was excellent. So thank you very much.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Topaz Museum. All Rights Reserved.