<Begin Segment 5>

MM: Describe, you were describing your neighborhood. How far to the beach and how far to the zoo?

RK: I was, when I look back, really lucky to have lived in Waikiki. The weather was always perfect, but we were always only a block or two from the beach, the famous beach of Waikiki, Kuhio Beach, and only a block from the, from the Kapiolani Park/Zoo. The park was there and the zoo, so we could see them feeding the elephants and we used to go and see them feed the monkeys in the morning. And we did some naughty things, too, though. We teased some of the animals, which we shouldn't have done.

MM: Who was your best friend growing up?

RK: Oh, I had several. In elementary school, I had a couple of people who lived in the neighborhood, and we played sandlot baseball, and also in those days, too -- and the school, by the way, Waikiki School was only the other side of the block. We lived on Cartwright Road, and the next was called Hamo Hamo, which is now Kuhio Avenue, one of the major thoroughfares in Waikiki. Kuhio Avenue was extended, so it came down to where we lived. And Waikiki School was located just -- and when I was sick at home, I could hear my classmates singing, we were so close. And in those days, you know, to help us have nutritious meals, they provided milk in the morning -- at ten o'clock or so we had a break. We had a piece of graham cracker and milk. And when I was sick at home, my friend would come running over with my milk at ten o'clock in the morning because I only lived a half a block away. [Laughs] But also, I went to Waikiki Elementary School. As they say, "under the blue shadow of Diamond Head I go to school," and it was very glorious. I wish I could show you pictures of my classmates, because it was so interracial. At any rate... but public school let out at two o'clock or so. And then most of us of who were Japanese descent went to Japanese school, so I went to Waikiki Japanese School, which was located in really in the Kapahulu district about a quarter mile away. And I had a best friend, Rusty, Rusty Kawamura. And so the routine was, as we got through Waikiki School, we'd go to my house, which was only a half a block away, and my mother would give us something to, a snack, usually crackers with peanut better or something and we'd eat it along the way and we'd go to Rusty's house, which was about two blocks from the Japanese school, and there his mother would give us something to eat or drink. And then we'd go to Japanese school.

MM: So you would double-dip on the snacks --

RK: Yes. [Laughs]

MM: -- before you would go to school, then? So, you grew up at the beach. Do you go to the beach often, now?

RK: Unfortunately not. As I like to say, "I was born on the beach at Waikiki, I made the mistake of going to college, and I haven't seen the beach since." That's literally true. I was having lunch a couple of days ago at the Outrigger Club and it's right on the water, and I looked out and I said to myself, "I haven't been in that water for years now. What's wrong?" [Laughs]

MM: It sounds like you enjoyed school, as a youngster.

RK: Oh, I enjoyed school very much. I thought it was fun. I don't know, I just -- it was fun in the sense that it was fun to be with classmates. Well, on the negative side, my mother, as I said, took in home laundry and during the summer vacations we had to help her a lot. She worked awfully hard seven days a week, and oftentimes I see, we used to remember her ironing well into the night. She took in more than she could handle, but we children helped out. I got to be an expert in working on the -- she had bought herself a kind of a commercial ironing -- that you could do sheets and certain parts of the trousers and so forth. I got to be pretty good at that, so I would do that. In those days, too, they boiled their laundry. And so, we started the fires, gathered the wood, and did all sort of things to help. So in many ways, when I went to school I didn't have to do all of that. And I enjoyed meeting friends from different parts of the neighborhood.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2004 Japanese American National Museum. All Rights Reserved.