<Begin Segment 5>

JK: Then from there, we moved to Delta, and that's when my father took, well, Joe was just six years old, and my father took him to school and started him going to school there. But before, before I started school, we had moved to Spanish Fork. And I started to go to Spanish Fork, and being the smallest kid in the class, why, all the other kids would come and beat up on me every day. They'd come and just about every day at recess, the teacher would say, "Go out and have recess," and the kids, all the kids, they'd get together and they'd conspire.

TI: So describe your, at this point, you're in Spanish Fork, who were your classmates? How would you describe your classmates?

JK: I don't remember.

TI: Were there, like, Japanese classmates?

JK: No, no. None of 'em were Japanese. We were the only Japanese family in that whole area. And when I started school there, why, of course, I was rather small for my age. And the kids would come and pick on me.

TI: And so why do you think they picked on you?

JK: Because I was different.

TI: Is it because you were small, or because you were Japanese?

JK: No, being Japanese. Because there were other kids as small, but they weren't ever noticed like I was.

TI: And so did your brothers also sort of...

JK: No, they didn't experience that as much.

TI: Okay. So what kind of things did you do in terms of growing up, for fun? Do you have any memories of games or activities you did with either your brother or other kids?

JK: Well, my brother Joe, he was a, he was a good athlete. And he was, in fact, in high school, he was the pitcher of the high school baseball team, and I think he still holds the strikeout record in the state of Utah for the number of strikeouts in one game. Twenty-three strikeouts in one game, and twelve in succession.

TI: That's amazing. Because you have nine innings, so the most you could possibly have is twenty-seven, and he had twenty-three strikeouts.

JK: He had twenty-three strikeouts in one game when the, when he was pitching for the Granite High School team.

TI: And was he scouted by any baseball teams?

JK: What's that?

TI: Was he ever scouted in terms of...

JK: Oh, no, no.

TI: ...of, like, pro, or someone?

JK: No. As a matter of fact, the Japanese -- Japanese baseball was a very popular thing prior to the war, up until about '39, up until 1940, why, we had a regular Japanese league, a Japanese, all-Japanese team. So Ogden, Syracuse, and Salt Lake and Murray, well, we all had teams that would play against each other every, all day in the summer, every Sunday. In fact, we had the Salt Lake-Ogden Nippon team, we called it the Odgen Nippons, and then we had the Salt Lake Nippon team, and the Syracuse Japanese team, and then the Murray Taiyo team.

TI: And generally these teams would just play against other Japanese teams, and they would kind of travel and play and do that? Or did they play against Caucasian teams?

JK: Yeah, we played a lot, we played Caucasian teams quite often, we played against the Caucasian teams. In fact, we played at the... well, it's Dirks Field now, but then it used to be called the Municipal Park. And one of the biggest drawing events that we had here was when we played the Salt Lake Tiger team, it was an all-black team. And they were a bunch of, some of them were excellent ball players. In fact, there was one fellow that was on the Coast League, he was in the Coast League team, and he was, he was a light-colored black man. And on this one occasion, when he was there playing in Sacramento, I think it was, this black player went up to the stands and he's talking to this black woman. And the manager came up to him and he says, "What are you talking to her for?" He says, "Well, she's my mother." And right away, boom, he was kicked off the team.

TI: Oh, so at this point, the baseball league was still segregated, not allowing black players.

JK: Yeah. This was in the early-'30s.

TI: And this was the Pacific Coast League?

JK: Yeah. And so he was kicked off the team because he was black. But he didn't look black.

TI: So let's go back to your brother. So he must have been a pretty big star in these Japanese leagues.

JK: Yeah, he was a, he pitched for the semi-pro team here, but then I was, I was kind of a benchwarmer on the teams that I played on here. But my younger brother, he was probably the best Japanese athlete coming out of Utah. He was an all-around athlete, he was an all-state football player, and he's, in high school he was all-state, and he was intermountain swimming champion from the university, and he played football at the university. And he, and he played a little tennis. And I invited him out one day, and he said he's just starting out to play golf. And I'd been playing golf for about five or six years, and I thought I was, I could show him up as far as golf is concerned. [Laughs] But it didn't turn out that way. He shot, we played at Fox Hills in Los Angeles that day, and I think he shot a 75 and I shot about an 85.

TI: And he was a beginner? He shot a 75?

JK: Yeah, well, he won a lot of trophies with the top-notch club in Los Angeles. He was a good, he was all-around, a good athlete.

TI: So how was it for you? It sounds like you were sandwiched between two excellent athletes. Was that difficult at times for you?

JK: Well, I was kind of left out on most of the things, and so I took up the sport of bowling, because neither of my brothers took up the sport of bowling, so I took up bowling. And I thought I was rather proficient at bowling because I've won the JACL's championship twice, and I won several state and city championships here, and also I was elected to the Salt Lake City Hall of Fame in the bowling circuit.

TI: And so do you recall what your highest, like, average used to be for a season?

JK: Oh, I was averaging around 200.

TI: Okay, yeah, you're were a good bowler.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Topaz Museum. All Rights Reserved.