<Begin Segment 6>

MM: When you were an elementary school kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

RK: Oh, I don't know. Nothing special, I think. In those days, we didn't think much. We thought, well, maybe we'd go to the university, but we never thought much about it.

MM: And then you went off to high school. Tell us about your high school days.

RK: Well, before that, in Waikiki schools -- and I went to what they call Washington Intermediate School, it's still there, and now it's called Washington Middle School, I think, but the buildings are all different. By the way, Waikiki School is no longer where it used to be, it's further mauka, or upland. Washington Intermediate School is where it used to be, but the buildings are all totally different. To go to Waikiki School -- I mean, to go to Washington Intermediate School -- Waikiki School, I could walk, it's only a half a block away, but Washington Intermediate School we had to catch a streetcar, later on, the bus. And this is where I met friends from all over besides Waikiki, Kapahulu, Dan Inouye from McCully and Fujio Matsuda from Kaka'ako. And it was fun to meet these people.

MM: So your world was expanding at that point?

RK: Very much so.

RK: And I also went to, at that stage, after Waikiki Japanese School, which only went through the sixth grade, my parents enrolled us at a Japanese language school in town, in downtown Honolulu, upper downtown. It was a Hongwanjischool, and very strict. Can you imagine in that hot weather, the boys had to -- those classes were segregated, the boys and the girls -- and the boys all had to wear black coats and ties. So I did go, I had to take the bus to go to that school, also. So from Washington Intermediate Sch ool, we all went to McKinley High School. McKinley is the largest, was the largest high school. When I entered McKinley in September 19'... what is it? '39. I still remember the headlines, it said "Hitler Invades Poland." And little did we know how much this would affect us, because in our senior year, December 7, 1941, occurred.

MM: And that would change a lot for all of you.

RK: It certainly did, yeah.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2004 Japanese American National Museum. All Rights Reserved.