<Begin Segment 7>

TI: And how about activities like, did you participate in things like Boy Scouts growing up and things like that? So describe that, what was that like?

JK: Yeah, we had a... of course, I wasn't a, I was a Boy Scout, and when we were living in Ogden, and we had a troop that probably surpassed all the other Boy Scout troops in the whole city for that matter, and in the way of activities such as climbing, climbing fences, and then writing stories and telling the stories, and in athletic endeavors and everything. We had a troop that was probably, surpassed all the Caucasian troops that participated in the Boy Scout groups there.

TI: And do you recall who sponsored your troop? Was it affiliated with a church or an organization?

JK: Well, I don't know whether it was affiliated, it was just a, we just had a number. And we had a scoutmaster who was always a Caucasian scoutmaster.

TI: But the troop members were all Japanese?

JK: Yeah, all the troops were. And we had, we had fellows in our group, they're like Taro Katayama and one fellow named Komatsu, and they were very, very intelligent people, and they would write, they'd write out the Scribe's Reports, which was actually very hilarious, very artistically written out and presented to the whole, the whole troop so that everybody would be laughing and enjoying the type of reports that they would produce. And these two fellows, in fact, Taro Katayama turned out to be a journalist for a newspaper, and he was later, I think, a journalist for... during the war, he was a journalist for somebody in Toledo, Ohio, and then he went back to California. And he joined the Hokubei Asahi staff as a, the English editor there. But he was, he was a brilliant man. And then we had another fellow here named Yasuo Sasaki, who was also a, he was an unusual, unusually bright fellow. In fact, he would go to the library and pick out about four books, and he'd be thumbing through these books and he'd have 'em all read before he got home. And he had a major in anatomy and music and English all at the university. He had a master's degree in all three of those subjects, and then he went back to, then he went back to Cincinnati and got his PhD. And I met him in Los Angeles at the time, and he says, "Well, I can't make any money as a PhD, so I'm going to go back to school to get my MD." So he went back to Cincinnati, got his MD, and he practiced medicine in Covington, Kentucky, for, until he retired.

TI: So let's talk about school a little bit in terms of, so what high school did you go to?

JK: I graduated from the Granite High School here in Salt Lake.

TI: And describe the student body. I mean, was it, like, how many Japanese, ethnically, different races, what was it like?

JK: Well, I think there were three or four Japanese in the entire school at Granite High School. When I was there, why, there was only one other fellow that graduated with me, and I think this Yasuo Sasaki graduated about four or five years before I did, at the same school. But at that time, he was probably the only Japanese at that, at Granite High School, and he was, he was the valedictorian.

TI: Was there like another high school or other high schools where there were more Japanese?

JK: Oh, yes. There was, West High School had the most Japanese, whereas East High School had only, they had Dr. Hashimoto and Sen Nishiyama. Now, Sen Nishiyama graduated the top of his class in engineering, electrical engineering. He couldn't get a job here. In fact, a friend of mine that owned one of the local electrical shops offered him a job for forty dollars a month. And just about that time, Sen's father passed away -- or mother passed away, and the father wanted to take her ashes back to Japan to bury it in Japan. And this was in, this was in 1937, 1938. And so he went back to Japan and he couldn't come back after that. And so he was, he was in, he learned the Japanese language and he was transforming the texts, the electrical engineering textbooks into the Japanese language, and he was working for the Japanese Diet. And then he later was working for Sony Corporation and he was, he got married. But he sent his daughter, his only child, to Philadelphia for her education.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Topaz Museum. All Rights Reserved.