<Begin Segment 4>

FA: The family. How did your -- what was the concern of the, your parents, about what you did?

YK: I know my dad was a hundred percent behind me. I had no real concern about him and his apprehensions, although I'm sure he had some apprehensions about my welfare. My mother, on the other hand, like a normal mother, was concerned and at one point even begged me to consider being like the rest of the guys and just go along and don't make waves. [Laughs] But I just attributed that to her concern for my doing something untraditional and that to her, represented a real threat.

FA: What were some of the concerns that your father and your mother said to you about your safety or what might happen? Did they say something, anything like that?

YK: No, they didn't really say, other than what I just related. They didn't say anything to really discourage me.

FA: Were they worried about what their neighbors were going to think?

YK: They didn't show it, but I was worried about that. I was concerned about that, especially after the trial.

FA: What happened... did you face -- what happened to you after, after the trial, in terms of how the rest of the Japanese American community treated you?

YK: Well, I certainly had some doubts, not that I didn't expect that kind of a negative outcome. When it's set down right in front of you, then, of course, all of a sudden, the reality of the situation seems to zap right in. And I was concerned about my parents having to live with this now that it's down in black and white, that we were convicted, and that we were doing jail time. And knowing the closed nature of the Japanese community, I did have a lot of concern for how they were holding up to this.

FC: How old were you when you...

YK: I had just turned twenty-one in the Cheyenne jail, just before the trial.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 1993, 2005 Frank Abe and Densho. All Rights Reserved.