<Begin Segment 6>

FC: What do you, do you tell your children about camp, about Heart Mountain, about the resisters? Or do you say forget all that, it's just going to mess you up, don't bother thinking about that stuff at all and just get good grades and get on with your life.

PT: I think for myself, I think, I know my wife is getting tired of hearing me say this and I think my children are, too. Is that I've told them that I realize that I've made a very bad mistake as a parent and as a husband in not sharing with them what I was going through and what was happening at that time, and what it meant for me as a Nisei to be growing up in a society where I didn't realize that from a very early age, because of the pressures from both the society and my parents wanting me to succeed, that I had really become a white person, and in doing that I denied myself. But I have shared with my children, my three children and my wife, that I regret a lot of those decisions, but from here on out, I'm going to be sharing with them what that experience means to me and what I'm doing currently in the Japanese American community. And I think with that as a parent and a father and a grandfather, I think that's about the best I can do.

KK: Sure, that's a lot.

FC: How about yourself?

KK: Well, my kids are of course all grown up and my oldest grandchild is beginning college this year, so all that is sort of behind me now. [Laughs] I don't think I did a very good job of telling them about camp because we never made it a point to talk about it. And... the way we brought our kids up, we never made a point of anything, I think. It was just that...

PT: Things were understood. [Laughs]

KK: No, no, they just watched us do the things we did and if they learned anything, they learned it just by watching us. And apparently it worked because all three are good kids.

PT: All right. [Laughs]

FC: What does camp, what does Japanese America have to show a non-Japanese American American, a pagan non-Christian like me, what do I have to learn from you from this? Can it happen to me?

KK: Absolutely, absolutely.

PT: Of course, of course. It happens with every generation because everything's in transition and change is the norm. But the greatest mistake I think we can make is not to learn from what has happened and I think that we must put a very high value on sharing and teaching about what the, what history has to teach us.

KK: And to be from our point of view, more sympathetic because of what we went through, that we should certainly know better when groups are discriminated against because of just being what they are.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 1995, 2005 Frank Abe and Densho. All Rights Reserved.