Densho Digital Archive - Jun Kurumada Interview

<Begin Segment 1>

TI: Okay, so today is Wednesday, June 4, 2008, we're in Salt Lake City, and my name is Tom Ikeda and I'm the interviewer, and on camera we have Dana Hoshide. And also in the room we have the son of the narrator, Kim Kurumada. But I'm going to start the interview by asking you, when and where were you born?

JK: I was born in Richfield, Utah.

TI: And what's your birthdate?

JK: December 13, 1913.

TI: And when you were born, what was the name given to you at birth?

JK: Jun.

TI: And do you know why they named you Jun, was there any significance to the name?

JK: I really don't know.

TI: So Jun Kurumada, is that correct?

JK: Yeah.

TI: And during the interview, would it be okay if I call you Jun?

JK: That's fine.

TI: So Jun, let me start by asking you, what was your father's name?

JK: Kenji.

TI: And where in Japan did your father live?

JK: Well, he was in Yamagata and then Fukushima-ken.

TI: And do you know what kind of work his family did?

JK: They had a, he had a hotel, the family had a hotel there, and he was the second son in the family, and so realizing that the second son is not gonna get any, any inheritance or anything, so he left when he was twenty-one and he came to the United States.

TI: And do you know about what year that would be?

JK: Well, 1906.

TI: And how would you describe your father? What kind of person was your father?

JK: Well, he was a... well, he was a very kind man, for one thing, very diligent, very hard-working man. And I think he was more ambitious in that he figured that he was going to make his fortune here and then go back to Japan.

TI: And did he ever talk to you about possibly returning to Japan after he made his fortune?

JK: Well, not really, no. After we were, after my two brothers were born, why, I guess he figured that this was his, his country, and so he took out naturalization papers and he became a naturalized citizen here.

TI: So he was able to become a naturalized U.S. citizen?

JK: Yeah.

TI: So that's very unusual, because most places would not allow that to happen.

JK: Yeah, this happened in, this was not until about 1970, or, no, 1950, 1955.

TI: I get it. Okay, so this was after the war after the McCarran Act, okay. Got it.

<Begin Segment 2>

TI: So let me ask you about your mother. What was her name?

JK: Her name was Tsuru Oi.

TI: Tsuru Oi?

JK: Oi, O-I.

TI: And where in Japan did she come from?

JK: She came from the same area, Yamagata, in Fukushima-ken.

TI: And then so how did your mother and father...

JK: Well, after my father came here, and he was here for five years, and he sent for her. And my mother is the, is the, I think, the second daughter of eight, eight girls in the family, eight girls and the one, one boy. And somehow they arranged to send her over here to marry my father. Now, she was very reluctant, actually, a reluctant bride. She wasn't very happy to come over here, but then when she did come over here, and they were married in Seattle.

TI: Well, before we go to that, so when you say she was a reluctant bride, what was she reluctant about?

JK: Well, she didn't want to come over here. She had a good job where she was, and her father, who would be my grandfather, why, he insisted that all the girls get a good education, that they would be educated just like any of the men would be. And so she was teaching school at the time when the family, I think it was one of these "picture bride" affairs, and the family there insisted that she come over here and marry my father.

TI: And what kind of person was she, and how would you describe her?

JK: Oh, she was a very diligent, very hard-working woman, very, very strong, strong-willed and very responsible.

TI: And how would you describe the relationship with your mother and father?

JK: Well, they get along fine. There was no animosity, there was no... I don't think that they showed any particular love for each other, except that they did act like husband and wife.

<Begin Segment 3>

TI: So let's go back, so you were just talking about how they got married in Seattle. And so this was about five years after your father had come to the United States?

JK: Yeah, well, it was 1910 when she came over here. And they were married in Seattle, and my father was working for, as a labor contractor for Utah Idaho Sugar Company. And they, so that's why they came to Utah. And, of course, my father had some friends, old friends that were farming here, and as it turned out, why, I think they helped my father in securing the land for these various farmlands that she, that he had worked on. As a matter of fact, in the years from 1910 until about 1922, which is only a period of about twelve years, why, we had moved from Salina, where my older brother was born, to Richfield, and then from Richfield to Layton, Utah. And then from Layton down to Delta, and from Delta to Spanish Fork, and then from Spanish Fork to Roy, and then from Roy to Ogden, and then from Ogden to Salt Lake.

TI: So explain to me why your family had to move so much.

JK: Well, that's because my father, I don't know how he managed to secure the rental properties that he farmed, he decided he'd go farming. And it was, it's unusual, I thought -- and I never talked to him about it and he never, he never did mention how he secured these farmlands and these various places. Now, from, I'd say from Salt Lake... well, Salt Lake was our last place, but then before that it was, like at Salina, Utah, which is in the southern part of the state, and then from there to Richfield it's a short distance. And that was a period between 1911 until 19', about 1914. And from that time we moved to Layton, and in 1916 my younger brother was born.

TI: Well, let me, let me see if we can get a little more information here. So you mentioned your father, so he was renting or leasing the land that he farmed?

JK: Yeah, well, he, I think he was just renting the land.

TI: Okay, renting the land, and then what kind of crops did he raise?

JK: Well, at first it was sugar beets, and then it was, like, alfalfa, and then he went into truck gardening, which was like onions and radishes and cantaloupe, watermelon, and produce like that.

TI: And do you recall when he would first go to a new, like a new farm, was the land pretty undeveloped or was it already farmland?

JK: No, it was under-, well, it was developed to a point, but not to the point where it was productive. That's why he had to leave. We left all the farms in that period, in that early period, because the farmland was all alkaline, and it was not suitable for actual, the growth of any, any products that he could sell. At first, I think he was satisfied with sugar beets, because we had a big sugar beet industry here at that time. But then when the sugar beet industry fell down, why, he decided to go into truck farming, which meant radishes and onions and strawberries, and the type that would be sold on the market to all the neighboring people. It wasn't, it wasn't like a big sugar beet farm or an alfalfa field or other type of feed products for animals.

TI: Okay, good. I mean, when I see this pattern it reminds me, I've done interviews with other farming families, and oftentimes they would sort of rent or lease the land for five years, and it was undeveloped, they would then make it into productive farmland, at which point they had to then move to another place because the owner actually wanted the land. So then in certain places in the Northwest, they would use --

JK: Well, I don't think that, I don't think any of the land that, that we farmed was suitable for lengthy farming. Because after maybe a year or two, the land would give out, and it would be usurped by alkali, or it'd be not very productive from the standpoint of the growth pattern of whatever, whatever he planted.

TI: Okay, so that makes sense. So maybe the land just gave out and he had to move to someplace else.

JK: Well, the only place that was productive was in Ogden. And at that time, this was about 1930, and my mother decided that Ogden didn't have a university. And for that reason, she wanted to come to Salt Lake because Salt Lake had a university here, and she wanted to make sure that, that all three of us went to the university. And this was when my older brother was graduating from high school, and so my father gave up his gardening farm in Ogden and came to Salt Lake. And when we came to Salt Lake and moved into this big house, which was owned originally by a polygamist family, and it was a big house, big farmhouse with... well, had, I think it had an icehouse, a barn, chicken ranch, and a grape vineyard. And it was the first house that we had occupied that had indoor plumbing. All the other houses prior to that never had indoor plumbing. We had to have, in Ogden, my father had, like a Nihonburo type of a bath, bathhouse outside the house, see.

TI: So I'm curious about this, this house that you bought from this, that used to house a polygamist. I mean, I'm curious, was the house different in any way in terms of the construction, in terms of the room arrangements or anything like that?

JK: Oh, yes. Well, the original, I'd say up until about... up until 1930, well, all the houses that we occupied were either just sheds or like two-room houses without any indoor plumbing. And they were just, actually they weren't, the one house in Spanish Fork, there was, it was a regular house, but it only had, I think, two bedrooms. But all the plumbing was outside, and we had --

TI: And so for instance, like this house in Salt Lake City, how many bedrooms did it have?

JK: Do I have?

TI: Well, in Salt Lake City, the house that you moved in...

JK: Oh, that was a big house. It was a house that was originally lived in by a polygamist family, and there was about eight bedrooms in that house.

TI: So why such a large house? There were only three boys.

JK: Well, we didn't occupy all the bedrooms. In fact, my two brothers occupied one bedroom, and I occupied a small room by myself, and my parents occupied another bedroom. And so, and on the upstairs, there was four bedrooms upstairs, but there was a family in Salt Lake, the two children were, I think they were really unhealthy children, and they needed some... oh, they needed some fresh vegetables and the fresh atmosphere of country life. And so we rented that house to these two little kids and the grandmother, they lived in part of the house that we had there, because it was a house that was big enough for at least, I'd say ten kids. And the original polygamist family there, they had eight kids, but they had all grown up and they'd gone away, and that's how we happened to move into that house.

TI: Well, this is a first for me. I'd never heard of a Nisei living in a house that was, that was built by a polygamist, so that's a new one.

<Begin Segment 4>

TI: Yeah, I want to go back and talk a little bit about your brothers, your siblings. So can you tell me the birth order of your brothers and the names of your brothers?

JK: Yeah, well, my older brother was born December the 11th, 1911.

TI: And his name?

JK: His name is Joe. And my younger brother was born January the 15th, 1916. Now, I remember...

TI: And I'm sorry, his name is?

JK: His name is Tatsuo. But later, his name is Tom. They changed his name to Tom later.

TI: And so you were in the middle.

JK: I was in the middle, yeah.

TI: Between Joe and Tatsuo. So I kind of wanted to go back to your early childhood. And so what sort of town do you remember the most growing up?

JK: Well, when my, this is a, rather a unique story in that when I was two years old, I remember my father took, took me and Joe and we -- this is January the 15th, 1916 -- and he took us across the field and sat us on the banks of the main highway through the town of Layton. And we sat there, and I looked back to see where my father had taken us, and I saw a horse and buggy drive up to the house. And I thought, well, that maybe he had some special conferences with this, this man. And then while we were there, a man, farmer, drove by in his horse and wagon, and he threw us out some parcels, little. And Joe and I picked them up, and they were all paper-wrapped taffy. And we thought, "Well, it must be taffy left over from Christmas or New Years." But we, and that was the first, our first experience with eating candy, and we thought that was great at the time. Well, a short time later, I saw the horse and buggy leave the house where we were staying. It was just a one-room shed where we were living at the time, and so, and it was cold, and we got back to the house where it was a little warmer, and I heard the cry of a little baby. And that's when my father introduced us to our younger brother Tom.

TI: Oh, interesting. So your father took the two boys out while your mother was having the third. And so the person coming, was that a midwife, or was that a...

JK: No, the doctor that, there was a doctor in Layton at the time. I think Joe and I were delivered by midwives, but Tom was delivered by a regular doctor.

TI: And so the doctor gave you candy? He was the one who dropped off the...

JK: No, no, he didn't drop, some farmer came along in the interim, while he was delivering the baby, I guess.

TI: That's amazing that you could remember that.

JK: Well, I remember that when I was two years old.

TI: So that must have been one of your first memories of...

JK: Yeah, it was.

<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.

<Begin Segment 6>

TI: Going back, earlier you mentioned growing up, like, in places like Spanish Fork, you were the only Japanese family.

JK: Well, we were the only Japanese family in Richfield, and the only Japanese family in Delta, and the only Japanese in Spanish Fork. But then after we left Spanish Fork, we came to Roy where we lived with, with my mother's sister, my aunt, the Satos, and they were on a big farm that was owned by Fred M. Nye of the, who was a very, very wealthy man in Ogden, and he owned the, he owned the farm, and he had an arrangement with my uncle so that my uncle operated the farm on a contingency basis of sorts. And until, until their, until they had their children, we lived with them from, I think it must have been about 1920 to about 1924, and then we moved, from there, we moved to Ogden.

TI: And about how many Japanese families were in this area of Roy?

JK: At Roy?

TI: Yeah, Roy.

JK: Oh, there were very few.

TI: Still very few.

JK: Yeah.

TI: So I'm trying to get a sense of when you first came in contact with a more substantial or larger Japanese community.

JK: Well, that was in Ogden, yeah. There was a, quite a, quite a few Japanese right in the city of Ogden, they were operating businesses right in downtown Ogden.

TI: And about how old were you when you were, lived in Ogden, do you recall?

JK: Oh, I was about, it was when I was about twelve years old, twelve to fifteen years old then, see.

TI: Okay. So when you think of the Japanese community in Ogden, what would be some examples or what kind of activities would the Japanese community have?

JK: Oh, I don't really recall, other than the fact that they'd have their annual church, church activities.

TI: And what would that be? What would that annual church activity be?

JK: Well, it was the... well, I don't know what they, they called them the shibais, that was the Japanese theater production of shows like the Kabuki shows that they would have. They'd have that say about once a year, and then have banners strewn all over with the names of contributors. And they'd, they would conduct that in the, in the Japanese church. There was an old Japanese church that, on, I think it was on Twenty-third and Jefferson in Ogden, and they still owned that. They still owned that property there. But until the Buddhist group came into view, why, the Japanese church was, it was a small group of about forty or fifty Japanese there. And then when the Buddhist church came, then the younger generation took up the religion of Buddhism, and they built a bigger church. And they have a much bigger congregation than the Christian church. And even in Salt Lake, the Buddhist contingency is much larger than the, than is the Christian.

TI: Okay. And growing up, did your family attend church?

JK: My family, my father and mother were very religious, and they insisted that we all go to church every Sunday.

TI: And what church did...

JK: We'd go to the Japanese Christian Church.

TI: And do you know what, was there a denomination? When you say Japanese Christian, was it like...

JK: It was the Presbyterian.

TI: Presbyterian. Okay, good. So again, we're in Ogden, how about things like Japanese language school?

JK: Well, we had a Japanese language school in Ogden, and I remember a Mrs. Kaneko that was a teacher there, and we had, oh, I'd say just about all the young kids in Ogden were students there at that, that school. There might have been, oh, there might have been twenty, twenty or thirty kids going to this Japanese language school, and they'd have, the books, I think from one to eight or one to ten, and as you progressed from one grade to the next, there was a progression of being able to read and write from one book to the next book. And I forgot, I think I went up to about the fourth or the fifth book, and I was able to read katakana and hiragana and a few of the symbols of, the characters that were just ordinary, but I've forgotten all of that.

TI: And when did you, when did the Japanese kids attend Japanese language school?

JK: After school

TI: So every day after school?

JK: No, I think it was about twice a week after, after school.

TI: And so they'd go to regular school all day, and then after school they would then go to Japanese twice a week.

TI: Any other activities like picnics, kenjinkai?

JK: Yeah. We had church picnics several times during the year. We'd have church picnics whereby we'd have races and all kinds of, well, I think most of us kids went to see how much we could eat, see how much... the older folks would prepare all the food and everything.

TI: So describe that. The food, where did it come from? Who prepared?

JK: All the mothers, all the mothers of all the families would prepare the food, and they'd have it at a regular picnic area. And they'd usually select an area big enough for, oh, just little races, running, three-legged races and some various types of wrestling. I forget, not too much of it.

TI: And about how many people would attend these picnics?

JK: Oh, I'd say about forty or fifty people would be attending. It'd be... I think it'd be an annual event.

<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.

<Begin Segment 8>

TI: So let's go back to you, and so what year did you graduate from Granite High School?

JK: In '32.

TI: So 1932 you graduated from high school. And then what did you do after you graduated from high school?

JK: I went right to dental school.

TI: And this was at the university in Salt Lake City?

JK: No, no, it was at the University of California in Berkeley.

TI: So you'd go from high school to dental school back then? Not undergraduate, but you'd go straight to dental school?

JK: Yeah, well, the undergraduate, the undergraduate school I went to University of Utah for, I was required to two years undergraduate for dental school.

TI: Okay, so you graduated from Granite High School, went two years at University of Utah and taking just general core classes, kind of? And then went to Berkeley for dental school.

JK: Uh-huh.

TI: And why did you choose Berkeley?

JK: Well, at that time, Berkeley and Southern Cal was the only two dental schools on the West Coast. And the nearest one was Northwestern in Chicago, and I had an entry into all three schools. And so I went down, I thought I didn't want to go back to Chicago, so I went down to Los Angeles and I, I had one of the students there show me around the school. Well, the University of Southern California at that time belonged to a Dr. Ford. It didn't, it wasn't a University of Southern California, at that time it wasn't until the University of Southern California took over the Ford Dental School there, and then they converted it to the USC dental school. Well, I went through the school, and it was an old building, and the tuition was twice what it was at Cal. So I went up to Berkeley, I mean, up to San Francisco and checked out the school there, and I found that the tuition there was about half of what it was at USC. And I didn't have any money, so I decided, well, that's where I'd enroll. And so I enrolled right at the University of California, at the dental school there and graduated in '37.

TI: And why did you choose dental school? What was it about dentistry that you're interested in?

JK: I think the reason for that is my mother wanted all three of us to go to college, and it was quite a nice financial feat to be able to go to college at that time. Because I know my neighbors, they had three children, three children, and they could only send one to college. And in fact there was a girl that was living in Salt Lake that wanted to go to college. And neither her parents or her friends could raise the twenty-five dollars necessary for the tuition for her to go to college, and so she couldn't go to college, and that was the tuition fee, twenty-five dollars then. And yet how my folks raised the money for a, for us to, for all three of us to go to college at the same time... my mother wanted my, Joe, to be a physician. And she says to me, she wanted me to go into dentistry, and she wanted Tom, my younger brother, to go to college and learn the, learn business. And so he went to the business school and I went to dental school, and my older brother went to medical school.

TI: Wow, so your mother had a huge influence on the three of you.

JK: Oh, yes. Well, my mother was very adamant about us going to college. When we were in Ogden and Joe was ready to graduate from high school, she says, "We've gotta move to Salt Lake because that's the only place where we have a university." Ogden had a two-year college program at Weber State, but that wasn't adequate for her. And so my father just gave up his business there and moved to Salt Lake.

TI: Well, I think your mother was very forward-thinking to, to have that.

JK: Oh, she was, she was the... I'd say the impetus for us to go to college.

TI: So let's go back to Berkeley. You said you graduated in 1937, but before we leave Berkeley, are there any memories or, of Berkeley that you have?

JK: In Berkeley?

TI: Yeah, Berkeley, anything that...

JK: Well, dental school was a school that you go from 8 to 5 every day, even 8 to 12 on Saturdays. And I really didn't have time for any extracurriculars. I learned how to play golf there, and the only way I learned to play golf was I was playing a little tennis before that, and of course, San Francisco is a town where it's moist all the time. And the tennis racquet, the guts on the tennis racquets would get fuzzy all the time and I'd have to have it repaired, and it used to cost me four dollars each time I'd have to have it repaired. And I couldn't afford that, so I had to give up tennis. And another dentist there, Dr. Murata was his name, and Mrs. Murata says to her husband, "Now, you're getting pretty fat, you're putting on a lot of weight." And she says, "You better get out and play some golf." And so she went out and bought him a whole set of golf clubs. And says, "Now, you take these clubs when you go out with Dr. Hirota and Dr. Oyama and go out and play some golf." Well, he didn't, he wasn't about to go play golf, so he called me in one day, and he says, "Take these golf clubs," he says, "take 'em and you go play with them." And that's how I learned how to play golf. I just took his golf clubs and went out with Dr. Hirota, and they were just beginning to play golf, and so I took his, these set of golf clubs. Of course, I couldn't afford anything like that, but...

TI: That's a good story. So when you go to Berkeley, the Japanese community is much larger than what you were used to.

JK: Yeah.

TI: So did you participate at all with the Japanese community, do anything there?

JK: No, uh-uh.

TI: But you met, obviously, some Japanese, the dentists.

JK: Only, the only participation as far as sports is to go out and play golf with the, one fellow was, that I roomed with that had graduated, and he had started a practice right in San Francisco.

<Begin Segment 9>

TI: So let's, so you graduate from dental school, Berkeley, 1937, so then what happened next?

JK: Well, I had to take the state board exams, so I took the state board exam in California, and then I came to Utah to take the Utah state board exam. And before I got notice of the passing of either one of 'em, I got a notice that I'd passed the California board. So I went back to San Francisco and I checked out several of the dentists there, how they're progressing in their practice there. And it seemed that they were just, there was no progress, they were all starving to death, for that matter. And I figured I didn't have any money or anything, so I decided I'll come back to Salt Lake. And my father helped me set up a practice by getting an office here. Now, at that time, after I'd passed the Utah board, I checked around to several of the buildings to get an office, and they were all filled. In fact, I talked to one, actually, First National Bank, and there were, there were spaces there, but I asked them, "Well, now, you've got spaces, and there are several doctors in the building." And he told me at that time, he says, "We don't want our elevators cluttered up with all these Japanese." And I said, "Well, there won't be that many Japanese," and he says, "We don't want any Japanese in our building." And so they wouldn't rent me a place, and I walked across the street. And it so happened that that dentist had died in an office that wasn't really a professional building, but it wasn't a professional building, but there was one dentist already in the building. And this, with a story above his office, and then this other dentist that had died. And rather than renovating the entire office and taking out the floors and taking out the partitions and everything, why, they figured, well, "If we could get another dentist in there, that would solve the problem of renovating the whole room." So I was able to rent the room there. I think the rental for the room was something like twenty, twenty dollars a month at that time. And so that's how I started.

TI: You know, you talked about that previous building, them not wanting to rent to you because you were Japanese. During this period before the war, do you recall any other events or incidences of, sort of, discrimination against Japanese?

JK: Well, there was quite a bit of discrimination. As a matter of fact, the board of realtors had a, as sort of a gentlemen's agreement that they would not sell or lease property on the east side of town to "colored people," that is including the blacks, and there weren't any blacks on the east side of town. And the only, only Japanese that were living on the east side of town was the Hashimoto family in which he was quite an influential Japanese here anyway. And he was, and so he lived up on the, on Twelfth East, which is just a couple of blocks below the university, and that was an elite area at that time. But there weren't any Japanese living east of there, and all the "colored" people were on the west side of town.

TI: So it sounds like housing there was discrimination, how about other things like movie theaters, restaurants?

JK: Well, the restaurants, we didn't have much trouble with the restaurants. But then the movie theaters, we were always shunted upstairs. Any theater that had an upstairs, why, they'd always ask us to leave and go upstairs. Now, I didn't notice that, that type of thing. I thought, "Well, upstairs is where the seats are," and so we just went up there as normally as it could be. Except that on one occasion, I had, I didn't have any patients that day, and I thought, "Well, I'll go down to this Capital Theater, and they have an upstairs." And I walked in, I got my ticket and I walked into the lobby there, and I met this fellow that I went to school with. And he was working his way through medical school at the time, and I sat, I stopped and talked to him for a little while. And he directed me right to, to a seat down on the main, main floor. And another, one of the ushers came up to him and says, "You can't let him sit down here, he's gotta go upstairs." Well, there was hardly anybody in the theater, it was a very... in fact, if I'd have gone upstairs, I'd probably have been the only person upstairs. But then I could overhear him say, "You can't let him sit down." He says, "Well, I know him, he's a friend of mine and I went to school with him, and to high school with him." He says, "I can't go down and tell him to go upstairs." And so I could overhear their conversation, he says, "Well, the next time any of these Japs or colored, you send 'em upstairs." And that's when I first realized that all the so-called "coloreds" were directed upstairs. And yet, the irony of that is that in Japan, the upstairs are the highest-priced seats, the third and fourth floor, you're looking down, and the main floor is the cheapest seats in the theaters in Japan. [Laughs]

TI: Did you ever talk to your friend about that?

JK: Well, no, I really didn't. In fact, we had a conference with Governor Rampton, and I think he initiated a plan whereby he would eliminate all the discrimination, especially in restaurants. And in fact, up until about 19'... well, up until about 1960, a lot of, many of the restaurants here wouldn't serve a black person.

TI: But the Japanese didn't have any problems with that, then?

JK: No, we didn't have any problem, I didn't have any problems simply because the Japanese, they just didn't go to these, these restaurants. They'd go to the Japanese restaurants, and there were several Japanese restaurants, but very seldom would you see them in the hotels or at the, like I say, Sutton's big restaurant, or Bull Brummels restaurant, or the Mayflower restaurant or places like that, which is the main restaurants, that is, the bigger restaurants in town.

TI: So any other kind of incidences of discrimination that you can recall for you or for...

JK: Well, there was discriminatory actions by the swimming pools here. In fact, it's like the Wasatch pool out here, they wouldn't let any Japanese or any blacks swim in their pools until, well, until they resolved that later, at a later time.

TI: And how did you know that they wouldn't let blacks or Japanese swim in the pool? Was that... like a sign, or is it just something you knew?

JK: No, no, there was no sign there, it was just the people that conduct, the operators, the operators, I suppose they were informed at that time not to, to direct the people, or... on one occasion, this was in 1935 when our class had a class swimming party at the Cliff House in San Francisco, and it used to be a hot springs in there. And the class went there for the swimming party, and I went with them. And when I went there, well, they wouldn't let me in. They says, "You can watch, but you can't go in swimming." The rest of the class, they were allowed to go in swimming. Well, I stood on the banks and I just watched 'em, watched the classmates swim. And I didn't, I didn't care too much about going into the sulfur spring there anyway, but then this was at that Cliff House swimming pool in San Francisco, which prohibited anybody from, the "colored" people from swimming there. And I was there last year with my grandson, and there was, it's been completely renovated, and it's a big fancy restaurant and a gift house now. And there was one elderly lady there that was working in the gift shop, and so I was telling her about my experience while going to, as a student, while I was a student. And she says, "Well, that's before I was born," so she didn't recall exactly. And so I said, "When did this convert into a, into a restaurant?" She said, well, when the hot water stopped, all the sulfur was, the spring that was producing hot water to the, to these places, all of a sudden it just stopped flowing, and so they converted it into a, kind of a sightseeing area and a restaurant and a bar, and a gift house.

<Begin Segment 10>

TI: So let's go back to Salt Lake City, and we're again, we're before the war, how was the Japanese community organized? Was there like a Japanese association or...

JK: Yeah, we had a, we had a Japanese association here. However, Japantown was, well, I'd say it was about a three-, about a three-block area, which is all where the Salt Palace is presently now. There was a town between, between South Temple and Third West, and First, I think and South Temple, between South Temple and about Second South. So it was just a small area there where we had Japanese hotels and Japanese restaurants and various markets, Japanese food markets, fish markets and places where the Japanese, actually, where they maintained all their businesses. Now that's all, that's all been torn down, and it was probably due to the efforts of the Mormon church that they can, took all the property and they built the Salt Palace and they built the big hotels. And so the only thing left of it is the Japanese church and the Buddhist church, and they're across the street from, practically across the street from each other, right on First South. But then that used to be the center of all the Japanese congregation.

TI: So you just mentioned the, the Mormon church. So here you had a Japanese Christian church and Japanese Buddhist church. Did the Mormons ever try to convert Japanese Americans to become Mormons?

JK: Oh, yeah.

TI: And did very many Japanese Americans do that?

JK: Oh, yeah, quite a number.

TI: So talk about, is this before the war, this is happening?

JK: Yeah, well, even after the war.

TI: Let's talk about first before the war. How was the, what was the interactions between...

JK: Well, there weren't, there weren't very many. Before the war there were a few Japanese in the outlying area, not within the, not within the city itself, but in the outlying areas like in, like in Murray, which is a little town, well, I guess it's a township just about ten miles south of there. Then there was Murray, and then in the outlying area, outside of the perimeter of Salt Lake City we had, there were several Japanese that joined the Mormon church.

TI: But was more after the war that more Japanese Americans joined?

JK: Yeah, well, those that, the Japanese that, I'd say that joined the church become quite affluent. In fact, the church was responsible for them becoming quite well-to-do, for that matter, in the line of property and in the line of all the industry that there was provided for the, not only just for the Japanese but then in politics, too.

TI: So it sounds like the church, the LDS church, once people became members, there was, I guess, maybe a network, a business network that would help them succeed?

JK: Yeah.

TI: Okay. You know, I forgot to ask this question. Going back to, sort of, the Japantown before the war, I was curious about the organizations, like a Japanese Association. Was this like Isseis who would kind of network amongst themselves, the businesspeople?

JK: Well, I'm not too familiar with the activities of the, of the Isseis at that time, but then they needed, they had a Japanese Association, just as they had a Chinese Association here, pretty much the same way, although the Chinese group was rather a small group.

TI: How about the Niseis? As they got older, did they start forming organizations or groups?

JK: No, no. The only organization we had was the JACL.

<Begin Segment 11>

TI: So Jun, where we ended up last segment was you had just mentioned the JACL, and that how Niseis, that was an organization that Niseis organized. Can you tell me how you first got involved with the JACL?

JK: Well, we had, we had a young Japanese organization here, which we called the Reimeikai, they called it Reimeikai. And it wasn't a JACL at that time until a later date, I forget, I don't recall the exact date of the, the involvement with the JACL.

TI: So let me ask you about the Reimeikai. What was the purpose of the Remeikai?

JK: Well, it was just a social group more than anything else.

TI: And do you recall who started this organization?

JK: Yeah, well, I think the one who started it was Joe Masaoka, and Miya, or Miya Asahina and Mary Sasaki, Yasuo Sasaki, and I think my brother Joe Kurumada. And they were the principal organizers of this Reimeikai. In fact, I had a list of all the members there where the secretary, I think the secretary was a girl named Tomiko Kimura. She was the secretary of that group, and we had about, I think we had about fifteen or twenty members at that time. And our purpose was mainly as a social group more than anything else. We would get together and have readings and mostly dances.

TI: Okay. And then how did it change into the JACL?

JK: Well, that, that is something that came about when the JACL wanted to incorporate our group as a JACL membership group. But that came about after the installation of the JACL that was started in, I think it started in Seattle with Jimmy Sakamoto and... let's see now, there was Charlie Tsukamoto, I forget. I forget the names of those that were involved in it at that time, other than Dr. Yatabe and Saburo Kido and fellows like that. Now, I knew Saburo Kido and George Inagaki and Carl Hirota and the Hayashis from my association with those people in San Francisco. But I didn't get to know Toru Sakahara until after, after he had evacuated and he went to law school here, and I met him while he was in law school here.

TI: So we're gonna get to a lot of these people later on, but so in the early days of the JACL, after a chapter was established in Salt Lake City, what kind of, what was the purpose of the JACL in those early days?

JK: Well, according to the, according to the... oh, I don't know, the motto was to "be better Americans in a greater America." That was one of the items that... and it was mostly a civic group, actually, to fight discrimination and to initiate a program whereby we could buy property and whereby the miscegenation laws would be rescinded. We finally got the miscegenation laws rescinded, and we finally got the ownership of property taken care of.

TI: So these were all sort of after the war? Alien land laws and things like that? But going back to the, before the war, I'm trying to get a sense, so the Reimeikai was more social, then the JACL came in and sounded like it was more civic. So before the war, would you say it was a combination of social and civic, or did it really change more?

JK: Yeah, it was a combination of both, for that matter. We used to have what we used to call JACL, you might say, graduation dances and a party for all the graduates of high school. And the JACL would sponsor dancing parties for all the new graduates. I think we had annual picnics for the JACL group.

TI: And it was the older Niseis who kind of organized all this? They would do all this?

JK: Mostly that.

TI: And how about the national events? Every once in a while, the JACL would have national events where all the chapters would get together?

JK: Yeah, well, I don't think that Salt Lake was big enough at that time to participate in the, in the national, except a few members here participated, like Mike Masaoka. And oh, let's see, Shigeki Ushiro, but then other than that, there wasn't too much JACL activity here, that is in the way, in the sense that it was conducted in, like in Seattle, in San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, places like that, where they had a bigger influx of Japanese, and where the Japanese were a little older, they were a little older group. Not like, fellows like Dr. Yatabe and Jimmy Sakamoto and Tsukamoto from Sacramento and places like that, where they occupied, you might say, all the official positions of the JACL.

TI: But yet, and you mentioned Mike Masaoka, during the war, he was the national secretary, and was a key leader during the war, and he came from Salt Lake City.

JK: Well, yeah, he was a, his father, or his family owned a fish market right down here in Japantown. And Mike was, I think Mike was about the fourth, fourth child in his family. He was, he was a very articulate fellow, he was kind of an obnoxious guy, for that matter.

TI: Why would you say he was obnoxious?

JK: Well, he was one that, who, one instance that... he was making a speech in Los Angeles, and he raised the ire of all, so many of the girls down there, because he called them all daikon-ashi. [Laughs] And they, and I think one of the gals says, "Well, who do you think you are, Clark Gable?" But then, well, he was... and he was, I wouldn't say that he was a belligerent fellow or anything like that, but then he was, he was quite an orator. And he taught public speaking and he taught oratory at the university, and he was selected to be a lobbyist, I don't know for whom, but back in, in Washington. And he was the JACL representative there.

TI: And so yet, I mean, so his, Joe was his older brother?

JK: Yeah, there was Joe, Shinko and Ben, and then Mike, and Art and another, couple more in the family. And I think Ben and one other brother were lost in the war.

TI: Yeah, okay.

<Begin Segment 12>

TI: So I want to jump ahead now to December 7, 1941. Where were you when you heard about the attack at Pearl Harbor?

JK: Well, what had happened, I was in bed, and that was a Sunday morning, so my wife and I were, overslept, or slept in, and I got a phone call from, I don't know who, recall who called me at that time. And he says, "Turn on your radio," so I turned on the radio and got the news that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. Well I didn't, I had no idea where Pearl Harbor was. But then we had a tentative JACL meeting that following Monday, that following day, a JACL meeting. And so Shigeki Ushio and my wife went down to this meeting place and we met with the Associated Press. And that's where I have that picture of the, of what came out in the newspaper.

TI: Now, how did the AP or Associated Press know to be there?

JK: Well, they, I think somehow they called me, and I says, "Well, we're expecting to have a meeting Monday night at the Civic Center Building," and I said, "I don't know who, or how many will be there, but if you'd like to meet with us, we'll be there," and they came down. And we gave them the, the words that we intended -- actually, the words that we had incorporated in our fealty to the United States was written by a Chinese fellow.

TI: So who was this Chinese person?

JK: No, my brother-in-law is Chinese.

TI: I see, okay.

JK: And he was the one that wrote the message for the newspapers to carry.

TI: And because he was a good writer, that's why you asked him to, or someone asked him to --

JK: Yeah, well, he was a, he's a lawyer, he was in law school at the time. And in fact, he was the president of the International Lawyers of... let's see, what was it now? In fact, we were down in Phoenix for a big celebration in his behalf as president or past president of the International Lawyers, Immigration Lawyers, as it was. And they had it at the, oh, the Hilton Hotel in Phoenix.

TI: And something I didn't mention or ask you, what was your role with the Salt Lake City chapter when the war broke out?

JK: What was that?

TI: What was your position or role with the Salt Lake City JACL chapter?

JK: What was my role?

TI: Yes.

JK: I was president of the JACL, that is, the local chapter of JACL.

TI: And so by being president, how did you become president?

JK: Oh, I think it's just a matter of knowing people. I didn't actually campaign for it or anything like that.

TI: And generally how long were the terms? I mean, how many...

JK: One year. A year.

TI: And so how long were you in office as president?

JK: I was in the office for, during the year of '42 and '43, and then again in '48.

<Begin Segment 13>

TI: And so I'm guessing, for the Salt Lake City area, the media and people like that would look to you for direction or information?

JK: Yeah, well, at the time, during the evacuation period, why, people would come to my office and ask about housing and employment. And it got to the point where they were usurping so much of my time in the office that I installed an office down in Japantown and I borrowed a space from an attorney. This is when Toru Sakahara, I think he was operating a little office downtown, and I rented, or I just borrowed a little space from him, and I put in a desk. And I hired a fellow named Jerry Katayama who had just graduated from college, and he was waiting for his draft card. And while he was waiting for his draft orders, why, I asked him to go down and man this office so that, we called it the JACL Emergency Office where all the evacuees that had come in from California or from Seattle would come down and they could make an inquiry there as to housing and employment. So we didn't have any, we didn't have any money, we didn't have any resources for that type of thing. So I had to, I paid him out of my own pocket to man that office for about four months, four or five months while these people were drifting into town, which was in the latter part of '42, early part of '43, in which all the Japanese that had been evacuated, who hadn't gone into camp, and which they came to Salt Lake.

In fact, there was one incidence, I was home and I got a call from a woman, and she says her name was Mrs. Kodama. And she was, she acted real hysterical about housing, and so I says, "Well, where are you?" and she said, "Well, I'm down here in Japantown right on the corner of Main Street and First South." And so I said -- and she called me at home. And so I went down there, and I'm looking around for this Japanese woman, Mrs. Kodama. Well, I couldn't find any Japanese woman, but there was a Caucasian woman there. And she came up, and there was hardly anybody there, it was a Sunday and there was hardly anybody there. So she saw me and she came up to me and she says, "I am Mrs. Kodama, and my husband and I have evacuated out here from," I think, "from Portland, Oregon." And she wanted to know if I could find her a place to live. And so I checked around and I checked with the real estate people and they, and they found one place up on Tenth East, and there was a little house that was being vacated, and so I says to this real estate person, I says, "Check and see if she would qualify." And so they wanted to get the, get the house sold. Well, I said, "How much is it?" and he says, "$4,200." And so I asked Mrs. Kodama, I said, "Well now, you'd have to pay maybe $4,200," she says, "I can do that." And so she bought the house and she moved in. And there was a neighbor there that was a pharmacist that I knew, and a couple times after that, this pharmacist came to me and he says, "Say, there's a woman that bought this house," but he says, "there's a Japanese fellow that comes in and he never leaves." And he says, "He's out in the yard working on the yard work and working around the house," but he says, "he never leaves the place." I says, "Well, why don't you ask her why he doesn't leave?" so he says, well, he'll ask her. And so he went up to her, and I found out that he had asked her why this Japanese fellow never left the house, and he says her answer was that her husband had passed away, and this Japanese man had been her, in the household working as a servant in the house all these years. And so when she moved in, why, she asked him to come and keep house and keep the, keep the yard and do all the housework and all that. And she says, "Well, he's more or less my servant." And that's how she got by letting him know that this Japanese fellow was not related to her or was not her husband.

TI: But in actuality, he was, they were married?

JK: He was actually her husband, see, but she wouldn't admit it to him. But everybody in her hometown in Portland knew, knew the couple.

TI: And you mentioned earlier the miscegenation laws in Utah, if they had known that they were married, would that have presented problems?

JK: Well, I've known other, I knew a Japanese fellow named Miyamoto who was married to a German woman, and they had three boys. And there was no, there was no indication of any hostility or anything like that against them. I don't think that there was any hostile action except the only hostile action that I experienced was when these kids, I guess they were kids, took their guns and fired into a home, this farmhouse, where the Japanese family lived. But it so happened that the kids were all asleep, they were in bed, and the bullets passed through the window, through the house. Well, what happened was this family that lived there had two boys in the army, they were the Tsutsui family, they were farmers out here on Fifth, I think they were on Seventh East and about Thirty-third South, and they had a house there that they lived in. The two boys, two older boys were in the army, and the three younger kids were at home. And right after Pearl Harbor, the house got shot up with guns of people that just trailed along, I guess.

<Begin Segment 14>

TI: So when you hear of things like this happening, was there quite a bit of fear inside the Japanese community in Salt Lake City?

JK: Well, not so much, because Sheriff Young proposed that all the Japanese had to turn in, turn in all the firearms that they had, all the cameras and radios that had shortwave sets, and especially cameras, and they would be stored in a common storage area near the police station when they were supposed to be able to recover that, although it was after the, the war. But when I talked to several people that stored their shotguns and their cameras, and they find that almost all of it was missing. The police or somebody had already confiscated or had taken, or had stolen so many of the things that they had deposited there.

TI: When you mentioned Sheriff Young, so I'm thinking, in your position as the president of the Salt Lake City chapter, were you in contact with authorities like Sheriff Young and other law enforcement officials? Did they kind of use you as a...

JK: No, not really, I knew Sheriff Young and I met with him, but we never did, we never talked too much about what would transpire as far as the attitude of the Japanese would be. Because I was asked to speak at several different organizations like the Knights of Columbus group, and then most of the Knights of Columbus group were Italian group. They asked me to explain the status of dual citizenship. Well, evidently, they didn't know that they were, as Italians, they were the subject of discrimination. Not in the sense that we were, but then they were also declared citizens of Italy by the Italian government, but they didn't know it.

TI: And so they were concerned about that, so they wanted to...

JK: Yeah, and so they asked me, and I said, well, most of the Italians, even if you're second generation, maybe not the third generation, but as far as the immigrants from Italy, and as far as their children, who would be second generation, are subject to dual citizenship by the Italian government. And most of them were really surprised to think that the Italian government rendered such a position.

TI: Yeah, so that's interesting. Going back to the officials, when I've interviewed people on the West Coast, oftentimes officials like the FBI worked closely with JACL chapters to help them either communicate information or to ask advice from the JACL in terms of pro-Japan factions and things like that. Was that happening in Salt Lake City?

JK: No, no. No, we didn't have much, except our travel restrictions were prominent here. That is, if we wanted to go out of town or if we wanted to go, say, a hundred miles out, why, generally be required to have an attorney, a U.S. attorney's permit to travel outside of the town. And in most cases, they didn't enforce it, and I don't recall that we were ever accosted in any way. Because when I went down to Topaz, why, my wife and I and Mrs. Hirota, and she had her three-year-old daughter with her. Well, we had an attorney's pass for myself and one for my wife, one for Mrs. Hirota...

<Begin Segment 15>

TI: Let me set this up a little bit. So Mrs. Hirota, you mentioned earlier a Dr. Hirota, a dentist that you knew in Berkeley, and so this is the wife of the dentist?

JK: Yeah.

TI: And so you were going to visit Topaz to visit Dr. Hirota?

JK: Well, Mrs. Hirota and daughter in one pass.

TI: All right, so Mrs. Hirota and their three year old? You said three year old daughter?

JK: Yeah.

TI: Okay, we're on one pass.

JK: And so we went to, when we went to the sentry at Topaz, why, the sentry looked at it and he says, "Well, you have to have another pass for the child." Said, "Well, it says on the, on the pass, 'Mrs. Hirota and daughter.'" But he can't read, see, the guy was illiterate, that is, the soldier there that was conducting the entries of people going into the camp. But anyway, he called in another fellow that could read, and we were able to go in. And I talked to Dr. Hirota, and there was another fellow there, Dave Tatsuno. Now, does that name ring a bell?

TI: Yeah, because he, he...

JK: He just died.

TI: Yeah, but he took film footage inside the camps, and that's how I know.

JK: Well, Dave Tatsuno was, he was going to Berkeley in the College of Commerce at the time that I was going to dental school. And I knew him because he, his family had a little store on, right on Buchanan, right in Japantown in San Francisco, and I remember him quite well because I remember he had, gave the obituary to a friend of his that had just died, and he couldn't finish the obituary because he broke down and cried. But I talked to him after he'd gone back to California, and he'd opened up a store in San Jose. And then I just heard that... when was it, about, within the last six months or so, that he'd passed on, too.

TI: Yeah, we earlier have an interview of him talking a lot about his, the film footage he took, 'cause he had a, a movie camera inside, inside camp. So you visited Topaz, I'm curious what your reaction was when you saw Topaz. What were you thinking?

JK: Well, I was really disappointed that Topaz was as decrepit and as... it was just a whole bunch of, or just a row of buildings, tarpapered roofs, and just the wooden buildings, and they all looked like sheds to me, they didn't look like homes or anything. But where all these people were confined... now, Topaz being in the Delta desert, why, this is a place where it gets real cold in the winter, real hot in the summer, and when the wind blows, it blows sand and everything all through the houses, and it's, it's hardly a place where, in the one case where this, I forget his name, but he crossed over the fence, and evidently, he saw a seashell and he wanted to pick up that seashell, and he went and he got shot and he got killed. And I saw the picture of his funeral that they had for him at Topaz, but thereafter, why, I think the military took away all the, all the ammunition and guns away from the sentries there.

TI: How much contact did the people, the Japanese Americans in Salt Lake City, have with the people in Topaz?

JK: Very little.

TI: How aware do you think the Japanese Americans were in, in Salt Lake City? Did they know about Topaz?

JK: Oh, yeah, they all knew about it. As a matter of fact, there were two dentists from Fresno, a doctor Sam Namba and a Dr. George Tsuda, and they, they were just newly married, and they each had a child, and they came to Salt Lake looking for jobs. Well, I hired Sam Namba as my lab technician, and he did a lot of work for me in the lab. And we had not contracted, but then I'd talk to Dr. Hirota and Topaz where he needed dental services for the patients down there that had broken dentures or broken bridges or anything that was replaceable, that he would send them up to me and I would repair 'em. And I had Dr. Namba repair 'em in my office, and we'd send it back to him down in Topaz. And that's the only connection I had with him, except that he decided his wife and child were living up here on First Avenue with another family, and they were living there on sort of a... oh, I think they were paying a little rent at the same time she was helping with the household duties. And Dr. Hirota was the organizer of the health clinic down in Topaz. Well, I asked him, I says, "Why don't you apply for the army?' And so he applied to get into the army, but somehow he, his application was held up.

And so he called me one day and he says, what can you do about this holdup of his application for the army. And so I called this Dr. Robinson, who was the, he was the head of the dental, you might say, inductees into the, into the Army Dental Corps. Now, I had, I had met with a Dr. Fairbanks, a general, he was the head of the army dental program, the entire army program, and he, and this is in 1939. And he says, "All you young fellows had better apply for your commission, otherwise you might be drafted as buck privates in the army." And so I went up to Fort Douglas with three other fellows, and we all applied for a commission in the army, and I'm the only one that passed the physical. The other three fellows didn't pass the physical although they got called in and I was left out. And they changed my draft, my draft status from 1-A to, I think it was 4-C or something like that. But then at the same time, I would get a notice from the Department of the Army to pack up my bags and get, and wind up my business 'cause I would be called in.

TI: So Jun, let me summarize this a little bit, 'cause you've covered a lot, let me just summarize to make sure I'm following. So before the war in 1939, you volunteered, or you, to enter as a dentist, so you could be commissioned as an officer rather than be drafted as a private.

JK: Yeah, that's right.

TI: And you passed the physical, but then once the war started, your draft status changed from 1-A to 4-C, so that's where we are. Okay, and then -- you know, I think I know where the story's going, and if you don't mind, I'm going to come back to it later when we talk about when you actually did enter the military service. Instead, I want to go back to Mrs. Hirota and Dr. Hirota. I want to get clear why they were, they didn't live together, why Dr. Hirota was in Topaz.

JK: I don't think that Dr. Hirota wanted his wife to, to experience that life at Topaz, and he was in a position to set her up in a home someplace where the child wouldn't be exposed to all that that was in Topaz. Because he, and he tried to get out of Topaz, but it was about a year and a half that he was in Topaz, and at that time, I finally talked to this Dr. Robinson, and I asked him, "How come you're holding up the enlistment of Dr. Hirota?" And he says, "Well, to tell you the truth, I don't want any Japs in my army." And I said, well, so I talked to Dr. Hirota, I called him, or I wrote to him, I think, and he wrote to the War Department. And the War Department wrote to Dr. Robinson and says, "Get him in the army right now." And so he and Dr. Takahashi, who was interned with him down at Topaz, they went, they got their commission as first lieutenants and went in the service. And Dr. Hirota came and picked up his wife and the daughter, and they went back east. I don't think that, I don't think that he ever went overseas, but he was stationed at Camp Shelby or one of the, the camps back east someplace before he was able to go back to San Francisco.

<Begin Segment 16>

TI: I also wanted to go back to something else you mentioned. So you talked about how after the war started, people were coming to Salt Lake City to resettle, so you started, you opened up this little office in Japantown with, to help people find housing and employment. I'm trying to understand better who those people were coming to Salt Lake City. Were these during that "voluntary evacuation" period when they could leave the coast and come to, and come inland? Are you talking about those people that were coming to Salt Lake City?

JK: I don't know their purpose except to find a place to live, more than anything else.

TI: But where were they coming from? Were they coming from the coast, or were they coming from a camp?

JK: They were coming from the coast. In fact, there was one couple, evidently she, this woman was a lawyer, and she came and she came to my office with this fellow. And they drove up in their great big car, and they had a colored fellow as their chauffeur, that had driven up. And I told her, "Well, conditions are such that you won't find anyplace to live around here," as much as we looked around. But so she says, well, she'll look around. But then later I found out that she had gone down to Phoenix, she just left town. And I told the Shigekawas about her, and she was a lawyer in Los Angeles, and they knew her. But that's the last I heard of her.

TI: Because when I did some research, it showed that about 1,500 people from the West Coast settled during that "voluntary evacuation" period in Utah. So quite a few people came into Utah, so I think those are the people you're talking about. But there was something interesting, too, in the archives. The governor at this time was Governor Maw?

JK: Yeah.

TI: And he received a letter from one of the chapters of the JACL, local ones, and they were concerned that if too many West Coast Japanese came to Salt Lake City, that would pose problems. There was concern about that from a JACL chapter. Was that a common, kind of, sentiment?

JK: Well, I didn't, I really didn't feel that there were that many people coming in, although lot of the evacuees that came in, they settled on farms and they settled in areas where they could find employment in Japanese restaurants. And many of 'em settled in the areas out in Clearfield and in Roy and in Ogden. And in fact, when they had their big meeting in Ogden about six months ago, they had a big anniversary meeting there. And I went down to that meeting and I met so many people there that are, they are the progeny of the evacuees that had come out. They said they lived in Ogden for three or four years, but they don't remember too much about it because they were either born in Ogden, or they lived there for, or they'd come out and lived there for three or four years, then they went back to the coast.

TI: But I was just wondering, though, but then before all that happened, just a feeling from the, from the Japanese Americans who were already in Utah. Were there concerns about maybe too many Japanese coming from the coast? Because I think the letter mentioned how the Japanese in Utah have essentially been kind of, have done a good job of, through their work and connections, have established a really strong reputation. And so they were concerned about the West Coast Japanese. Do you just, I mean, not to say that it didn't work out, because I know they came and worked out, but I was just wondering about the tension.

JK: Well, I don't think there was that much tension there because there wasn't enough, there weren't that many people coming out, especially in this area. I think a great many of 'em went to, like to Denver and Omaha and Chicago. There were a good number of 'em that settled in areas back east, and never even went, returned to the West Coast.

TI: Okay, I was just curious about that.

[Interruption]

<Begin Segment 17>

TI: So Jun, this next segment, I want to kind of touch upon... so during the war, the national JACL had to relocate, they had to leave San Francisco and relocate someplace else, they chose Salt Lake City. Do you know why they chose Salt Lake City?

JK: I don't really know why, except that Saburo Kido and George Inagaki and his group decided that Salt Lake City -- we had a building here, the Beeson, old Beeson Building, that was, it was kind of an old building, and they were able to relocate the JACL office there. And I think they were able to relocate the Pacific Citizen with Larry Tajiri in the Beeson building. Now, that, I think shortly after the war was over, why, they demolished the building, because it was an old decrepit building to begin with. And they were able to get into that building to establish the JACL office, that is, the national JACL office. And I don't know exactly the reason for why they set up here, they could have gone to Denver. The only other choice was Salt Lake because of the available spaces here.

TI: And so what interaction did you have with national JACL, and once they came here, did you have much to do with them?

JK: With the national?

TI: Yeah, with national. Did you do anything with national?

JK: No, I didn't. I didn't have too much to do with... this is all through '4-, the year '42 and '43. I was tied in with the local JACL to the point where we were doing what we could to, to rehabilitate all those Japanese who had come out, especially fellows like Fred Wada, who established a community, actually, up in Keetley. In fact, he called me one day and he says he wanted me to check on this family where his daughter was being, well, he wanted his daughter to go to school here, and his daughter was twelve or thirteen years old. And he checked out a family in Salt Lake that would take care of her and see that she went to school, because there wasn't any school up at -- well, there was, but then it was in kind of a remote area.

TI: Can you tell that story? It's a pretty amazing story, that Fred Wada, didn't he lease a large piece of property and brought quite a few families to work that. Can you describe that a little bit more?

JK: Well, it was in a canyon, up in the canyon in a town called Keetley. And he established a whole community there for, I think it was about three years that the, that they farmed up there. Right now, all that is under water because they built a reservoir there, and it's completely under water now, but then we, my father had a farm up there, had lettuce, we raised cauliflower and lettuce. And my father knew just about the time that the lettuce would dry up in the valley here, and we didn't have icepacked lettuce coming in from the coast, but it was too expensive. And so he raised the lettuce up in Peoa, Peoa and Keetley are right together there. And so the harvest time for the lettuce up there was just about the time that the dry up time was available here. So when the lettuce was down to twenty-five cents, why, the new lettuce from the canyon would come in and it'd be four dollars. And that's how my father figured out how to make a little extra money by farming up in Keetley.

TI: So is that what the people in Keetley did, they, it was pretty much truck farming that they did?

JK: Yeah, it was what they call truck farming.

<Begin Segment 18>

TI: Going back to the JACL, you mentioned some of the names, I mean, these are names I read about. And I was hoping that you can give me maybe, maybe a fuller description of who these men were and what they were like. You mentioned Saburo Kido?

JK: Yeah.

TI: And what was he like? He was the president.

JK: He was the president, but then I didn't know him too well, except that he was... well, he was like an old Issei individual. He was, I couldn't describe him as anybody... he was a lawyer in San Francisco.

TI: Okay, so let's, if you don't know, that's okay. I just, I'm going to mention names, and if you can tell me something, that's great. If not, don't feel like you have to. How about Joe Masaoka? What was he like?

JK: Well, Joe Masaoka was a self-born leader of people. He put himself in as the leader, and of course, he was probably one of the older Niseis in Salt Lake anyway. And I don't know, other than the fact that he helped his parents operate the market that he had, they had. He didn't, Joe never went to college, and Mike was, Mike and Ike are the only two in the Masaoka family that went to college.

TI: How about, you mentioned earlier, a Dr. Yatabe?

JK: Well, no, I didn't know Dr. Yatabe too well, I knew of him. He was a, I think he was a dentist, but I didn't know too much about him.

TI: You mentioned earlier a George Inagaki?

JK: Yeah, George Inagaki was, well, I really didn't know what he did, except that he, he was working on the staff of the JACL, and he was a contributor to the Pacific Citizen. What he did here, I really don't, I never delved into his activities.

TI: Okay. You mentioned Pacific Citizen, how about Larry Tajiri?

JK: Well, Larry was a real nice fellow. We used to play poker with him all the time, but he was the editor of the Pacific Citizen. And he and Guyo, his wife, they lived together in, well, let's see now. It was by Liberty Park. And he was, he was a very, very easygoing, congenial fellow.

TI: Did you know Fred Tayama?

JK: Fred?

TI: Tayama.

JK: No, I didn't know Fred Tayama.

TI: How about Tokie Slocum?

JK: Oh, well now, he was from Seattle, wasn't he?

TI: He was southern California. He was, I think, part of the...

JK: Yeah, Slocum, I heard quite a bit about him, but I don't recall that there was, other than the fact that he adopted the name of Slocum from, I forget what his name was before that.

TI: Okay, how about Jimmy Sakamoto?

JK: Well, Jimmy Sakamoto was, he had lost the sight of his eyes as a boxer, and he was quite active in the JACL, being... I don't know exactly what Jimmy did.

<Begin Segment 19>

TI: Right after Pearl Harbor, there were a couple of emergency JACL meetings, and one took place in March 1942 in San Francisco, where you and a lot of other, I think, chapter representatives were present. Can you describe that meeting?

JK: Well, I think it was, I forget the name of the hall, but as I recall, we sat in this, in the guest area, and I think it was Milton Eisenhower and Bendetsen and General DeWitt, they sat up on the stage. And the questions were, at that time, says, "What would become of the Japanese?" and, "Why wouldn't it be possible to ask President Roosevelt to rescind the order?" They, the speakers on the group there, I have, like the pictures I have there, have several of them, that I became acquainted with some of them after, after they'd evacuated. And they were asking, like, General DeWitt if it weren't possible for the Japanese to stay where they were and to be curfewed and to be policed by the MPs. And he said, "No way," he says, "The only good Jap is a dead Jap, and we're gonna get you out of here." And he was adamant about the order of President Roosevelt on that. There was nothing that could persuade them to change their attitude toward the Japanese. And besides that, there were signs all over California to "Get the Japs out of town," "We don't want any Japs here." And such as it turned out was that all the produce went to, went to pot, and all the farm, farmlands and the lettuce, especially the farmers, were, and the people were complaining about the inferior products that they were getting from the local farmers up there, and they wanted the "Japs" to come back.

TI: So this was, timing-wise, this was kind of a... what's the right term? Like a last-ditch effort by the JACL. So this was March 1942, so this was after Roosevelt had signed Executive Order 9066 but before people were being, were being removed, and so this was an opportunity or something that the JACL tried to do just to get them to change their mind.

JK: Well, we couldn't do very much about that, they says, "That's an executive order," and they ordered the army to conduct the process of evacuation.

TI: Right. So the next, there was another emergency meeting in November of 1942 in Salt Lake City. Do you recall that meeting?

JK: I recall part of it, but I don't recall too much of that meeting. There was a meeting of, oh, the so-called JACL heads, but then I don't recall what was discussed there, except what we could do to further the enlistment of the Nisei soldiers. And that's when, that's when the 442nd was being formed, it was about that time.

TI: Yeah, because right, because November of '42 was right before, so it was January of 1943 that the government said that Japanese Americans could volunteer, so this was a precursor. But you're right, I think one of the key issues was the formation of the 442 or letting Niseis join. But some of the research said this led to a lot of unrest inside the camps, and in particular, the "Manzanar riots." So what was the impact of the "Manzanar riot" on the JACL?

JK: There were too many dissenters in Manzanar. As a matter of fact, this Lyle Kurisaki was from Brawley, California, and he was at Manzanar. And he says that he was also tied in with the JACL there, and they came after the, that is, the dissenters, they came after him. And he says that he got under the bed table and he just hung himself up as high as he could under the mattress. And they looked under the bed and of course there was an open space there, that he wasn't... and so they figured he's not there. And he says that's what saved his life, because he says that they were out after all the JACLers, that they blamed the JACL for causing the evacuation. Of course, as far as I knew, the JACL had nothing to do with the actual evacuation except follow the orders. And of course the JACL, I think they encouraged the people to cooperate as much as they could, but they weren't as, there were so many of them that were dissenters that they didn't want to cooperate. And then when the, when the papers came out of this "loyalty papers," that asked if they would fight for the U.S. or they would resent, or they would resent the actions of the U.S., or that, whether they would volunteer. But I don't know exactly what happened in that case there, except Lyle and his wife and son and daughter moved to Salt Lake, somehow they got out of Manzanar and they came out here. And I played a lot of golf with Lyle while he was here. And he was working at an ice cream -- well, I don't know what he was doing in Brawley, California, but then he came out here and he was working at an ice cream factory here.

TI: And so did he tell you how difficult it was in Manzanar for him? Is that when you were, like, golfing and he would tell you these stories?

JK: Well, he was... I think he indicated that he was the club champion at the Brawley Country Club. And he came out here and he played golf with us quite a bit.

TI: No, but I was curious, I mean, when you golf with him, did he talk about the difficulties in Manzanar?

JK: Yeah, he did.

TI: And so that's when he told you the story of hiding?

JK: Yeah, he was hiding from the, from the dissenters there.

<Begin Segment 20>

TI: In 1941, you got married. Can you tell me how you met your wife?

JK: Well, I met her many years before that.

TI: And what was your wife's name and...

JK: Helen Gim.

TI: And so when you said met her earlier, how did you meet her years before?

JK: Oh, well, she was quite friendly with the Japanese girls, the girls here. And there weren't, at that, at that time, there weren't very many "eligible," so-called, girls of that age group. In fact, there might have been a dozen girls of her age that were eligible for marriage. Now, lot of 'em, I often wondered how some of these fellows and the girls, how they got together myself. Like the fellow from Murray that married a gal from Ogden, and the guy and his, and the girl from Ogden marrying some guy from Helper. And it was a matter of getting together to these, what we called intermountain social events that we had here.

TI: So going back to your wife, Helen Gim, what was her family background? How long had her family been in the United States?

JK: Well, her father and, they were restaurateurs. He had a restaurant in downtown Salt Lake, and he died, he died when she was, I think she was about thirteen or fourteen, and she had two brothers and a sister, and she was orphaned by the time she was fourteen years old. And I think she was taken care of by the state Family Service Society that placed her in a family home.

TI: But I'm curious, so were her parents immigrants?

JK: No, her family, her mother and father were Chinese, but they were married in Seattle, but they were both American-born.

TI: So she was kind of like a third-generation, almost Sansei...

JK: Yeah, she was like a Sansei.

TI: And so I'm curious, you showed me a picture earlier of a JACL national convention, 1940, and your wife was in that, that picture.

JK: Yeah.

TI: So she would go to Japanese American, sort of, events and functions?

JK: Yeah, she was with the JACL group that went to that Portland convention.

TI: Okay. So you got married in 1941, and tell me in terms of children, how many children do you have?

JK: I had, I've had five. My daughter was born in '44, and Kim was born in '45, and I have one that's a lawyer now, he was born in '50, and there is one that's a cinematographer for television, and he was born in '5-, let's see, '52, and then Craig, the last one, was born in '59.

<Begin Segment 21>

TI: Well, and when you were having these children, let's go back to the story about joining the military service. We had, earlier you had talked about before the war going down and registering to be a dentist in the Dental Corps, but they didn't call you then. Why don't you tell me the story about when they finally called you.

JK: Well, they didn't call me, but every year, just about every year, the War Department would send me a notice to wind up my business, they would be calling me. And so I would send my patients to other dentists, and I said, "Well, I can't take care of you because I'll be called into the service." But then shortly before I was called in, they would, the army would rescind the order. And that went on, actually, until '53. It went on for, for actually, for thirteen years, they kept me on the verge of going in and then they'd cancel the order. And finally on this one Monday morning, I got a call from the adjutant down in San Antonio, and he says, "You got our orders?" and I said, "Yeah, but I thought you'd rescind it. They've been rescinding my orders for the last thirteen years." And he said, "No, this is for real, you better get down here." So I packed, went home, packed up a bag, took the first plane out, and I ended up in Oklahoma City. And I changed planes there, and I got on this plane from Oklahoma City to San Antonio. And as it turned out, I'm the only passenger on that plane, and the stewardess came up to me and says, "Wouldn't you like something to drink?" and I said, "Yeah, I'll have a cup of coffee." So she brings me over a cup of coffee, and I look around and I'm the only person on that plane. And she says, "We've got a shuttle from the airport down into, down into town." We were staying at this Bannock Hotel, and I says, "Well, I've got to go to the camp, but then I'll go to the hotel." And they said, "Why don't you ride in with us?" so I rode into San Antonio with them, and I stayed overnight at that hotel. And the next day I went to, I took a cab and went over to the camp and registered, and all of a sudden I'm getting calls and I'm getting visits from these people that come over. And says, "Come on," they'd take me to lunch, they'd take me to dinner, but they wanted me to go to the store to get all my uniforms, get my clothes. And so I didn't know anything about a quartermaster where you could go and get your clothes and all that for army surplus, or army products, so I go to this store and they outfit me with a tailor-made uniform like the uniform there. And all my clothes and the army clothes were all tailor-made. And I paid a fortune for them, but then I thought, "Well, that's the way we had to do it."

And so I was there for, until, I think it was January or February from November, and then right away I was at San Francisco at the Presidio, and from there I went to Tokyo. And at Tokyo, at Camp Drake, which was the replacement depot there, and this one officer came over and he said, "Do you have any relatives in Japan?" I said, "Yeah, I have relatives here," and that's all he said. And so he, so the two colonels and myself, I was sent up to Hokkaido to the airbase, the Shitoshi Air Base, and these other two colonels were sent to Seoul over in Korea. And this was a funny story, but the one colonel there figured that he was gonna take a trip around the world, and so he'd ordered, he was from Philadelphia, he'd ordered his wife to pack up her duds and drive to San Francisco, and load the car onto the ship and come to Tokyo. Well, he couldn't find housing in Tokyo, and he couldn't find housing in Seoul. And so housing in Seoul was eighteen months, and by that time, he would be home. So he told his wife, "Well, pack your stuff and go on back home." [Laughs] And so, but he had planned to motor from Tokyo all the way to England, all the way across the country, and then, and have the army pay for it. But as it turned out...

TI: Well, in the same way, I'm wondering, so did your wife and children, did they stay in Salt Lake City when you were in Hokkaido?

JK: Yeah, yeah. Well, I was married, I had four kids, and I was forty years old when the army called me. And I was talking to Ed Ennis, who was the Civil Service Commission, chairman of the Civil Service Commission in Washington, and he says, "You didn't have to go," he says, "you should have talked to me." And I said, "I didn't even know you then," see.

TI: And why? Because you were, because of the children, the age, that you probably could have...

JK: Yeah, the age and the... oh, I think he was, he was about eight years old then, see. And the two other boys were two and a half or three, three and one, and the youngest one was just a year old.

TI: So did that present, sort of, problems for the family? I mean, it seems like it'd be difficult to have you gone all these, these two years.

JK: Well, of course, my wife took care of the kids and the household and everything while I was gone, but it was, I'm sure that it was quite a hardship on her.

TI: How about for you? How was it for you to be away from the family during this time?

JK: Well, there wasn't anything, wasn't anything I could do about it.

TI: Okay, and then after that, after a couple years, then you came back and got your discharge.

JK: Yeah. Well, the thing that was, rather seemed like all these people had, going to the service, they get a big high bye-bye and goodbyes, and they always get a big reception when they come home. Well, when I came home, I just walked all by myself right to the house. Well, I flew into Seattle, and I asked the, at Camp Williams, or I forget what camp it was.

TI: Maybe Fort Lewis?

JK: Huh?

TI: Was it Fort Lewis?

JK: Yeah, yeah, Fort Lewis, just south of Seattle. And I asked the, well, I think it was some sergeant there, I says, "Get me a sedan," I said, "I have to go up to Camp Lawton at Seattle and deliver some papers." And so he got me a sedan, and I said, "Well, instead of going to camp, take me over to this address up on University Street," where Toru Sakahara lived, he was living there at the time. So I went over there and I bunked with him for a couple of days before reporting to Camp Lawton to deliver the papers that I was supposed to take over there. And so, and then from there, I just flew home.

TI: Oh, that's, that's a good connection. After you returned to Salt Lake City, did you stay involved with the JACL over the years?

JK: Yeah, yeah.

TI: So this summer, they're gonna have another national convention in Salt Lake City. Are you planning to attend?

JK: I don't know anything about it.

TI: Yeah, it's gonna be in July, they're having the national JACL convention in Salt Lake City.

JK: Oh, is that right?

TI: Yeah. So I was wondering, knowing that, would, are you planning to attend, do you think?

JK: I'll attend knowing that, now that I know about it.

<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.