<Begin Segment 13>

AL: Did you talk to your children at all about your life in camp or that you were in camp or your renunciation or anything?

KO: They're quite interested in the camp life.

AL: But like in the 1950s, 1960s, did you talk to them at that time?

KO: No, after grown up huh?

AO: No, Patty in the first or second grade asked me says, "Our teacher would like to have you come to the school and talk to the class," and I said I'd be glad to.

AL: About what year was that?

KO: Patty was in first grade?

AO: Yeah, first grade.

AL: And when was she born?

KO: 1950?

AO: '62

AL: '62, okay. So it would be late 1960s that you went to speak about it? What was it like talking about it? Was that the first time you talked about it publicly?

AO: Yes, it was. And it surprisingly, even at that age, that they were concerned about the condition of the camp, what we ate and so... and then later on after Charlene moved to Centerville, Ohio, our grandchildren had a project on talking about the internment. So I give them information about internment and so they got A-plus in their project.

AL: Wow, when was the first time that you went back to Manzanar? That you visited Manzanar for the first time again?

AO: It was quite late. And my mother used to go.

AL: Did your parents come back from Japan or did they remain over there?

AO: My father remained. My mother came back about 1956 or '7, she wanted to come back.

AL: And your father didn't?

AO: No, so he had his own home so he had a place to live. But I felt that after I came back that I had a more comfortable time readjusting in the United States than most of the ones when the camp was closed and they returned to different parts of the United States and into the Los Angeles area had a very difficult time. They had a lot of racial problems, I never had that. And even with the Western Car Loading, there was no racial problem at all.

KO: We had a good company. I worked at Western Car Loading. They have a teamster's union, of course we had to pay the dues but all the insurance they covered.

AL: Yeah, you said that was good insurance, it sounds like.

KO: And then retirement.

AO: A lot of ones that was on the Gordon returned to the United States. And some areas it was extremely difficult to, even to buy food. But in Fukuoka I don't think Kimi's family ever had any difficulty buying food.

KO: No, during the war, store opened just a little bit in the morning but they don't have much to sell. But when my father was young he was a regular army officer so every officer has a private soldier look after, you know, polish the shoes or something like that. And then he used to come to Sunday he used to come to the house and spend the day and so anyway he was a family, so ration was not enough. And so he go to his house, he lived by not too far, forty-five minutes or so. So he can buy stuff but other people, stores closing, so no rice, so they put a lot of water in like a what you call okayu, that runny rice.

AO: Watery rice.

AL: That's interesting.

KO: So we never was, didn't have to have those kind of rice. We had enough rice.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright &copy; 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.