<Begin Segment 9>

RP: What do you remember about that day?

KY: That day?

RP: Yes.

KY: Pearl Harbor day? Well, the fact that me and this other fellow were working and we heard the news that Pearl Harbor was attacked. And well, I didn't think much of it. It didn't bother me. But as it turned out it did because we went to camp after that. We were put into concentration camp. Had it not been for this Pearl Harbor thing we probably would have never gone to camp, right? But that's what happens.

RP: So you were in your senior year at Santa Monica High School. And you...

KY: Uh-huh, when war broke out.

RP: ...and you had this dream about graduating there.

KY: Yeah.

RP: What was school like the next day after Pearl Harbor was attacked?

KY: Nothing unusual. No. Nothing unusual.

RP: Did anybody come up to, or offer support? Teachers or principal or anybody say, "You're not responsible for this. We support you"?

KY: No, no.

RP: No incidents?

KY: No incidents. No. But after I moved here, this gal, she lives on north side but she's, I don't know what she does. But she approached me and said that, "How would you like to speak to this group at the high school about your experience in camp?" You know, concentration camp. I says, "Well, okay I don't mind." So a group of us that were in camp, there was about half a dozen of us, we were at Santa Monica High School and we spoke to the students about camp and our experience there. Because a lot of 'em probably never heard about the concentration camp. Because that's what it was, a concentration camp.

RP: What was that experience like for you, speaking to the students?

KY: Well, it wasn't, it wasn't bad. A lot of, like I say, a lot of the kids didn't know anything about the camps. They certainly didn't teach it at the high school, about what happened during the war. But if one of the teachers felt it was important enough to teach the other students at the high school what I went through, well, we said okay and we talked to them about our experiences.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.