<Begin Segment 2>

TI: Just tell me a little bit about, going back to your mother, what was she like?

RK: She was a very, kind of vibrant kind of person. She talked a lot -- and throughout her, as a young married wife, eventually she became an Avon lady. And so as an Avon lady, you go out and talk to the public, and so she was very friendly that way.

TI: And so an Avon lady, that's the first time I've heard of a Nisei doing Avon lady. Any stories she's told about being an Avon lady in terms of going out there as a Japanese American, and was that, any difficulties with that?

RK: Not that I... I mean, not, she never talked about that. And she just seemed to have this network of people that she would sell Avon to.

TI: Would she focus on the Japanese American community or was it just the...

RK: No, it was more kind of where we lived in San Francisco, and there was, like an office building that she developed a lot of customers there. But it was not really focused on Japanese American customers as it were.

TI: Okay, interesting. Your father, what was he like?

RK: So my dad was very involved with the Japanese American Citizens League, or the predecessor of that when he was in Centerville. And actually, there's a number of pictures that Dorothea Lange took during that period where -- I don't think my dad's in the picture, but there's a picture of my grandfather, and there's another picture of my aunt sitting in a horse stall at Tanforan. And I know that picture is in some of the books that are around, and one of 'em, I know you can see the name Konda in there. Because he was kind of involved with the community, I guess, when Dorothea Lange was taking the pictures, she ended up taking some photos of his, my dad's sister and his father.

TI: Interesting. Yeah, we have a lot of those photographs in our archive. I'll have to go back and look at that. I'm curious now. I mean, I love her photographs, they're really powerful.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.