Densho Digital Archive - Michiko Hara Kawaguchi Interview

Densho Digital Archive
Manzanar National Historic Site Collection
Title: Michiko Hara Kawaguchi
Narrator: Michiko Hara Kawaguchi
Interviewer: Richard Potashin
Location: Sacramento, California
Date: April 2, 2011
Densho ID: denshovh-kmichiko-01

[Correct spelling of certain names, words and terms used in this interview have not been verified.]

<Begin Segment 1>

RP: This is an oral history for the Manzanar National Historic Site, and we're talking with Michiko Kawaguchi this afternoon. And our interview is taking place at the Sacramento Japanese United Methodist Church on Franklin Boulevard in Sacramento. The date of the interview is April 2, 2011. My name is Richard Potashin, I'm the interviewer, and Kirk Peterson is our cameraman today. We'll be talking with Michiko about her experiences at Santa Fe -- I'm sorry, not Santa Fe -- Santa Anita Assembly Center as well as the Topaz War Relocation Center. Our interview will be archived in the Park's library. And Mich, do I have your permission to go ahead and record our interview?

MK: All right.

RP: Thank you so much for coming and sharing some of your stories with us today. And can you give us your birth date and where you were born?

MK: I was born in San Francisco, September 30, 1925.

RP: And were you born at a hospital or born at home?

MK: No. In those days everybody had midwives that came to the house, yeah. So, as far as I know, all of us had, were birthed by midwives.

RP: And your full name at birth?

MK: I beg your pardon?

RP: Your full name at birth?

MK: Michiko Hara Kawaguchi.

RP: And can you share with us your father's name and your mom's name?

MK: Do I what?

RP: Your father's name and your mother's name?

MK: Yes. Sunesuke Hara.

RP: Okay.

MK: And Setsu Matsumoto.

RP: Okay. And where did they come from in Japan?

MK: They came from Yamaguchi-ken, on the southern end of Honshu.

RP: Okay.

MK: And...

RP: Do you know much about their family life in...

MK: Not too much. We, I made one trip with my mother-in-law. She had never been back in over eighty years to... you know, since she had come. And we made a stop at my mother's home. What had happened was that they were five daughters and per Japanese custom the oldest one married, took a yoshi, what we call it. The man comes into the family and takes the family name so that the Matsumoto name would not die out. And fortunately she had one son who in turn had two sons, so the family still lives in the same home. And all five sisters are gone now, you know, but they, they would have been... seeing as how I'm eighty-five, they would be gone. But my father was also from the same area. And...

RP: Was his family...

MK: I don't, I don't know what my grandparents on my father's side did. But my maternal grandfather, he was a businessman and he bought a lot of land. That's why... and they occupied it so all during the war and everything they were able to keep it all. We went to visit and he had just built a more of a western style house. So that we would be more comfortable staying there and what have you. But they had a, they manufactured noodles and they were up like at two o'clock in the morning to start the noodles so that by four o'clock they would be ready to, it would be all packaged and ready to be delivered to the supermarkets and various places. So every morning at ten o'clock you sampled their noodles to make sure that batch was acceptable.

RP: Wow. Did, do you roughly know when your father came to the United States?

MK: He came when he was eighteen. And he came to Seattle first. And then he had more friends down in California so he came to California. My mother came straight to San Francisco.

RP: And do you know if she... was she a picture bride?

MK: She was living, I think, with the Hara family. I really don't know. They never did discuss it. But seeing as how she came, I think, in like 1920 or something like that, it must have been. Because my dad was already here. But you know, they would have researched the families and then you know, and made the arrangements in Japan.

RP: Right.

<Begin Segment 2>

RP: And so he, your father settled in the San Francisco area?

MK: Yes.

RP: And he got into the dry cleaning business.

MK: Yes.

RP: And how did that come about?

MK: First he came and he worked as a houseboy. And he studied English. He was in the East Bay someplace I think at that time. But this one larger dry cleaning trained a lot of people. And he had no skills when he came. And he wasn't... as far as I know, they did no farming in their family. And my mother's side did a little bit of farming. But that mostly for their own consumption. 'Cause I remember her saying, oh, she would work a little bit before she went to school in the morning. But on the whole I don't think... I think they were middle class. I don't think they had to struggle for a living. I think they did all right. And then he, you know, even when we went to visit in later years you could see where they had managed their land well. So...

RP: And where was your father's business located?

MK: San Francisco.

RP: Uh-huh.

MK: On the outskirts of Chinatown, outskirts of North Beach.

RP: And that's where you lived?

MK: That's where we lived.

RP: Where you grew up.

MK: Yes.

RP: Uh-huh. And what are your earliest memories of growing up in that San Francisco, North Beach area?

MK: I guess, I can remember starting Japanese language school when I was about the second grade, and it continued until Pearl Harbor. And that's when they said no more language schools. So, I think I finished the equivalent of what they would call eighth grade. But you know, over the years you lose a lot if you don't have the Japanese speaking people around you.

RP: Right.

MK: But my mother and father both learned English. So what we couldn't say in Japanese we just said in English.

RP: And what language was spoken in the home, primarily?

MK: Both.

RP: Both?

MK: Yeah. I was talking to another friend of ours who had, she was a Japanese national. And she said her daughter did the same thing, spoken Japanese to her, spoken English to her friends. And it just came out that way. We had no problem with it.

RP: And you grew up in a pretty diversely ethnic area, in North Beach area.

MK: Yeah, at that time North Beach was predominately Italian. And so most of my classmates were Italian. We were on the outskirts of Chinatown and so naturally we had a lot of Chinese friends. There was a Filipino group that would meet around there. And so we, the contact we had them because they would patronize my mother and father's business. But we grew up with all these different races and actually we didn't think twice about it really. We didn't let it bother us. But San Francisco's still like that though.

RP: Yeah, always will be.

MK: It is a melting pot.

RP: Right. And your, you had three other sisters?

MK: I had three sisters.

RP: And can you give us their names and their date of birth?

MK: Okay, Taiko, she was born on January 20, 1921. Chizuko, she was born on August 14, 1924. And my younger sister, Sadama, was born on March 18, 1928.

RP: Okay.

MK: The oldest one is deceased now.

RP: Oh, okay. And did you get, did you feel close to all your sisters or was there one particular sister that...

MK: Mostly I played with my, just my younger sister. At the time of the evacuation my older sister was attending UC Berkeley. Actually, she was in nursing at the hospital in San Francisco. Chiz had graduated from high school at sixteen and a half. If you had all your credits then they let you graduate early. So then Sum and I were the only ones left in school. So, yeah.

<Begin Segment 3>

RP: And where did you attend school?

MK: Grammar school was Jean Parker. And it's still standing there on Broadway and Powell Street.

RP: Huh. Is it still an active school?

MK: Yeah. And junior high was Francisco Junior High. And that was on, in, deep in the heart of Italian-town, in North Beach. And then high school was Galileo. I finished up my senior year in Topaz, Utah.

RP: In Topaz, Utah. So did you get, you know, with Italian friends and acquaintances, did you get introduced to that culture pretty...

MK: Because you had, you were, you moved from class to class more or less as a group anyway. The schools were small in that, in those days.

RP: Right.

MK: Yeah. And so, you know, we didn't socialize to the extent that we went to their homes that much. I remember going to my Italian girlfriend's house. And so I learned a lot about Italian people from her but... I don't think... I think maybe parents were a little more strict about what you did after school. You didn't run around and go here or go there. Well, we had, Monday through Friday, we had Japanese language school anyway. So it's just Saturday, Sunday that we would be going anywhere, like church on Sunday and things like that.

RP: What was your attitude towards language school?

MK: It was fine. I think the only thing that bothered me is that we had all the same teachers and they expected us to excel in the same way that my older sisters did. And then that was a little bit hard to put up with. But you know like if they got A's they expected me to get all A's and things like this. I did make the honor roll but still...

RP: That wasn't good enough?

MK: I wasn't too enthused about all this, but I think the teachers were more ambitious for the students in those days. The classes were smaller. They could work better with the smaller classes.

<Begin Segment 4>

RP: And tell us a little bit about some of your, some of the holidays the family celebrated.

MK: I beg your pardon?

RP: Some of the holidays that you celebrated when you were growing up?

MK: Oh, the regular ones like we always do: New Year's, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter. We did the Japanese ones, Girl's Day, March the third.

RP: How did you celebrate Girl's Day?

MK: We had the dolls and everything. And we had the special mochi at, at that time. But no, mostly the holidays were just the holidays that everybody just celebrated. I think we had Obon. We still have that to this day.

RP: Right.

MK: But I think because our parents were Buddhist, after camp my mother did convert to Methodist. And my father said it was all right if she did. And I think it served her well. I think that's why she lived a fairly quiet life. She never did get really excited. She was good that way.

RP: How about your dad?

MK: He was on the quiet side. And so I... when we were children you, you'd hear parents arguing and all this kind of stuff like you would normally do anyway. But I think they, they were just too busy to... life was not complicated. And I think that made it easier for us too. Because not living in Japantown, it made a difference. Because we always used to say, well you have to watch out what the neighbors are gonna think about what you're doing and things like that. But we didn't have that.

RP: Were there other Japanese families in the North Beach area?

MK: Oh yeah, but we were, you know like one here and one there. But we knew each other. So, it worked out okay.

RP: You mentioned that your family was Buddhist.

MK: No... in the early days.

RP: In the early days?

MK: Yeah. But then this Pine Methodist Church would come around and pick up the children for church. And so from an early age we, all of us daughters, went to the Pine Methodist Church. It was on Pine and Larkin. And we participated in all their activities and things like that. It, to us it was a normal childhood. We didn't expect big things. We didn't expect expensive things or anything like this. But I think in those days everybody was in, more or less, in the same category. And I think we all grew up happy.

RP: And how, how successful was your father's business?

MK: He did good until 1929. And then after that the business was going downhill. But somehow or the other they managed to feed us and provide for us. But later on there was more competition. And I... well, you grew up not expecting everything to begin with. And I think when you, when you're brought up that way it's much easier. It isn't like, you know, so and so had this and we don't have it.

RP: Right.

MK: We never... I didn't anyway, I didn't feel that it was hard for us. But I think Japanese culture is different. You're brought up that way. You live that way. And to this day... we provided more for our children because we knew what we did without, but then that's this day in age too with all this technology floating around and everything. And if you don't have a cell phone, kids think you're just terrible and you know, you're supposed to be texting your friends and all this kind of stuff. Because when you look at our grandchildren, they're all doing all this stuff that it doesn't even really phase me really. I carry a cell phone...

RP: Right.

MK: ...in case I have an emergency and I need to get a hold of somebody fast. That's about the extent of my cell phone.

RP: You had some other social occasions. You mentioned about that every, was it every year that all the dry cleaning people would...

MK: Yeah.

RP: ...get together and have a big picnic.

MK: Yes.

RP: And where was that held?

MK: In the Sunset District. In those days Dolger had not built all those homes out there yet and you just had blocks and blocks of sand dunes. And I don't know, I guess we were allowed by the city to do it. But everybody just packed up a big lunch and we went out and had games and baseball games and competition, running races and stuff like that. And it was fun. I don't... Playland at the beach was there, below the Cliff House there?

RP: Oh, right.

MK: Where the rides are. And there was some rides there and my mother and father would let us, they called these little cars "little red bugs." And you went you around on a course on that and they would let us do that. As we got older they let us ride some of the other things but... I don't like these thrill rides so to speak.

RP: Right. Another event to look forward to during the year was the prefectural picnic?

MK: I beg your pardon?

RP: The prefectural picnic?

MK: Yeah.

RP: Yamaguchi-ken.

MK: Uh-huh.

RP: Can you tell us a little bit about that? About the prefectural picnics?

MK: Oh, outside of the fact that... gee, everybody just went. We just had a good time. They would be singing. The dances that we do at Obon, a lot of us grew up learning those dances. And we just did it just to socialize. I can remember the family across the street, the father of the family, he taught all of us how to do some of those dances. But it's like Japanese folk dancing. I can remember doing that growing up.

RP: Do you still, do you still have, have those?

MK: Well, they still do that at Obon.

RP: Uh-huh.

MK: Even here in Sacramento. Yeah. But I don't participate anymore. I'm afraid I am not capable of doing it anymore. You know, I'm sorry my husband isn't here for you to interview because we had no boys in our family and boys are brought up different from the girls. He was the oldest and the only boy in his family. And he was not expected to do anything in the house. And his father would take him here and take him there and everything else, leave the girls at home. And that was one thing I brought up when we got married. I said, "This is America, you know, it's not Japan, so don't expect me to wait on you hand and foot." And when I said I wouldn't do something he learned to put up with it and do it. And that included light housekeeping, washing clothes when it was necessary, you know, things like that. But you can't live... because we lived the American way so to speak. We don't live the Japanese way. We all... husbands are expected to pitch in these days.

RP: It's different, yeah.

MK: Yeah.

<Begin Segment 5>

RP: Share with us your memories of December 7, 1941.

MK: Let's see. In December 1941 we were at church when we learned about the bombing. And we hurried up and went home and we didn't wander out and even go walking as much as we used to before that. 'Cause we were afraid and --

RP: Mentioned your...

MK: -- it wasn't that people were picking, picking up on us and saying things or anything. But I think that's... the difference is that we weren't in Japantown. And let's see... I can remember my older sister being very angry because she was already old enough to know what was going on. My husband was also very angry about the, all this evacuation and what have you. But I think the hardest part was having to leave home. And then like my sister was so close to finishing, finishing her nurses training at UC Hospital and she had to go back at, in later years and finish up. My husband went back to UC Berkeley after he was discharged from the army. He stayed in Japan for a while with the occupation and one day he decided that he needed to get home. So he came back. But I think he learned a lot because he was with the occupation. You know, how the Japanese nationals were reacting to everything and his cousin said that they were told horror stories so to speak. They said when the U.S. Army comes that you'd better hide from them and this and that and what have you. And 'course, none of that happened, which was a good thing. But he, so he was able to visit some cousins and uncles in Japan. He, because he was in the MIS he spoke enough Japanese at that time that he could associate with the people there. When he came back he didn't use the Japanese language and he lost quite a bit of it early on. But we... English has always been our primary language anyway.

RP: What was, what was school like after December 7, 1941, for you?

MK: I just went to school like we always did. I didn't worry about anything.

RP: You mentioned there was one teacher that had a...

MK: Yeah, there was one teacher, the science teacher, and she had a brother who was already in the armed forces and I think he was overseas already and... but she kind of ignored me so to speak. But I... nobody else did. I didn't let it bother me really.

RP: Galileo High School was located right next to Fort Mason.

MK: Fort Mason was back, right there next door.

RP: And you had, you had an interesting ritual that you had to participate in.

MK: Yes.

RP: Can you tell us about that?

MK: Yes. If you could get home in twenty minutes -- we had these drills every so often -- you're allowed to go home. If, you know, if there was an attack or anything. It took me twenty-five minutes but I went home every time. They were shipping troops out of Fort Mason. I figured I was better off getting home. However, whether I had to run or whatever, and I wasn't gonna just sit there and wait for the school to get bombed or anything.

RP: Right, and then that brings up that whole issue of war hysteria, and people really, the fear. Could you, can you express or share with us some of that, some of the... did you feel that from other people?

MK: Not too much. But I think it's because, because I was so young then. And I don't think I was inclined to get as angry. Because even when we were in camp I fell in with this group of boys and girls. There was about twelve of us. And we made our own social fun and what have you and we were deprived of a lot of things but everybody was. I think if some people had more than you and flaunted the fact that they were better off, I think it might have affected us. But I think on the whole my age group kind of made the best of things. And then, like I said before, I got this grant to go out to college and that made a big difference too.

RP: Right.

MK: And a lot of people in my age group went out to college.

RP: Yes. To get back to just after Pearl Harbor, you shared with me that, that your father, even though he was not very active in some of the local organizations, was actually picked up by the FBI?

MK: Because if you were say a leader in one of these Japanese groups, they all were picked up right away. But my father might have gone to meetings and this and that but he wasn't a leader or one of the... I think the ones that were the leaders were probably... like the head of the Japanese school. I really don't know what happened to the minister at our church. Because after that we didn't go to church after that. And but you know to this day. some of those people that we went to church with when we were children, we still know each other. We still associate when we... it's good. I'm afraid we're all in our eighties though.

RP: Right. And he had his suitcase already packed and ready to go?

MK: Yeah. Because we didn't know for sure, and when the men were getting picked up around our neighborhood, you know, you had to be ready more or less. Then my mother worried having all daughters and no sons to help and all this kind of stuff. But I think, well, my father carried the burden. Because it was all girls. You know, like when we were in camp he would salvage lumber and make tables and chairs and this and that and what have you. 'Cause they only gave us the cots.

RP: Right.

MK: We didn't have to sleep on straw mattresses, though. We did have mattresses.

RP: From the very beginning?

MK: Yeah.

RP: Oh.

MK: I felt sorry for the people who spent all that time in, like in Santa Anita and they were in the horse stalls all that time. And we weren't... we were in the barracks.

<Begin Segment 6>

RP: Tell us about any preparations or efforts that you made to prepare to leave home and go to Santa Anita.

MK: We, we left a lot of things just sitting there. But the good things like our Girls Day dolls, the kimonos -- I wished we had saved a lot of the Japanese dishes. We didn't -- but we had these two trunks that we filled and left at our church. They allowed us to store it there and we were lucky. It was all intact when we came back. And but you know, all the basic things, it was like starting all over again. And my mother and father had to do that because I was still out in the Midwest going to school and my oldest sister was with me. My other... Chiz in the meantime had gotten married and her husband was in the army at that time. And it was just my younger sister who was left in camp. She graduated in 1945. And Taiko had her come up to Chicago for a year. And then gradually we all wound up back in San Francisco.

RP: San Francisco. Now, there was your mom's sewing machine that was given to...

MK: Yeah. We had her old Singer that you... no electricity. You know you used a pedal. And she kept sewing for us all along, mending clothes and what have you. It was, I think one of my nieces has the sewing machine now. But we had it all along after we went back to San Francisco and I remember sewing on it.

RP: And that was left with a gentleman in the neighborhood?

MK: I beg your pardon?

RP: Did you say that, that that sewing machine was left with somebody in your neighborhood?

MK: Oh yeah, we had an electric one. And I assume he sold it. There was a pressing machine that had to get sold. Probably our personal things, outside of the Japanese dishes, I don't think we had too much that was really precious. Not like some of these families that were living in Japantown. A lot of them had a lot of, they would be antiques. But we didn't have that much. So, 'course what I own now, would be considered antiques by the younger generation. Because we all have our Japanese dishes and chopsticks, you know, decorated chopsticks and what have you, tea sets. You know, we accumulated that all on our own after.

RP: What about your father's business? How was that...

MK: We just had to leave it. He couldn't sell it to anybody else. So, but... I don't know whether my mother and father were angry that we had to leave so much behind. But I think it's our culture that what you can't do something about you have to forget and just make do with what you have. And I kind of do the same thing even today. If I can't afford to buy something I think, well, do I really need it? And then you think about it, you lived without all this technical stuff growing up and what have you. I really don't need it.

RP: Yeah. How did, how did you ever survive without a cell phone growing up, you know.

MK: The family did buy me an iPad for Christmas.

RP: Oh, oh good, all right. So you're coming around.

MK: Eventually.

RP: Eventually. And so how long did you have to prepare to leave, do you remember?

MK: We had four days. Yeah. Because we were in what they called a sensitive area, near Fort Mason, near the wharfs, you know, the piers where they were shipping out things and I guess they thought maybe we could walk around there and maybe spy on what was going on. But there wasn't any of that in our neighborhood, among our Japanese friends. And I think that's why when they started picking up these men who were active in all the Japanese groups, they, I think they were rather bitter about it but we didn't have contact with those people until we were back in Topaz. They gradually let the men come back. So...

RP: Were there any individuals or organizations that helped you during that period of time?

MK: No, everybody just packed up on their own and that was it. Well, they had these limits of how far from your own house you can go. And then you had to be at home eight o'clock at night.

RP: Yeah. How did, how did that work with your, with your lifestyle?

MK: Well, we didn't care. We would rather just be safe in our own place. And then we did have blackouts and the sirens would go off and then you'd have to douse all your lights and everything like that. That happened. But we never saw anything. Nothing happened in San Francisco anyway. Other places, I think like Santa Barbara little subs went up to the coast and everything else like that but I don't, I don't remember anything like that in San Francisco. But the hysteria was there.

Off Camera: Can I ask a question? So you got restrictions on people of Japanese ancestry about not going out...

MK: You didn't, well no, we were supposed to be home at eight o'clock in the evening.

Off Camera: Right. And they're rounding up Japanese nationals.

MK: Yeah.

Off Camera: And you're in a community that's full of Italians, presumably Italians nationals. Did you ever think of the irony of that? That they weren't...

MK: You know, I think I was too young to really get mad about a lot of things. And when I talked to my sister later on, and even my husband, and I can see the anger there. But you figured they were in college already. Like my sister was ready to graduate that June. And everything was just yanked out from under her feet. And then the injustice that our parents had to go through. Because when they came you figured they were not English speaking. So to... they knew a little bit of English. And they had to learn a skill to make a living and it was not what they would really wanted to do. But I think people who were in the business category in Japan, I think that was bred into their upbringing. Because, like before the war, there were quite a few families that had their own business like, bookstore, grocery store, things like that. And they were doing all right, better than my parents did. But because we're more of a... there wasn't that much that they could expand to. They were just stuck in that one business all their lives.

RP: And you said the competition was increasing.

MK: Oh, yeah. Because after when the Depression came along and, I mean you could get a suit cleaned for seventy-five cents in those days. Yeah, but everything's relative. Food didn't cost that much. Besides, we ate Japanese style and it's mostly veggies.

RP: Well, just to follow up what, on Kirk's question, did you, did you sense any fears from your Italian friends or what, what was gonna happen...

MK: No, they just treated me the same way.

RP: Well, did they feel like something might happen to them as well as what was happening to you?

MK: I don't think so. Outside of the fact that men were getting drafted. But see, we were too young for that. We left because my father had to sign up for the draft. They registered everybody up to the age of sixty-five, sixty-four or sixty-five at that time. And it didn't matter that you weren't a citizen or not. You had to sign up for the draft.

RP: Right, right.

<Begin Segment 7>

RP: So you were one of the first groups to leave San Francisco?

MK: We were the first group to leave San Francisco.

RP: And where did you assemble at?

MK: On Venice Avenue. I can't remember exactly the block it was. We were bused to the trains. And they were miserable trains. I could remember that. And all the way down to Arcadia.

RP: And can, can you go back to that day in your mind and sort of recall the atmosphere and the feelings of people? What was their body language like?

MK: No, you know... I think... so much time has lapsed. You just kind of forget a lot of things that happened. And I think if we didn't turn out all right it would have made a big difference. Say if we had come back and having nothing and having to start all over again, I think if we had been in that miserable state forever it would have made a difference. But we all worked hard to do better. And I know I went to some places, like summer vacation from college, and they'd say oh, well we're not, we don't have a job for you they would say. The employment office would send me out and then they'd say, "Oh, we don't have a job for you." Like that. I wired, one summer I wired lamps for government housing. I learned how to wire fluorescent lamps. And another one, it was a greeting card company and they hired Japanese ladies. Because we were good with our hands, putting, assembling ribbons and all this kind of stuff, decoration on greeting cards. Because we got paid by how many boxes you finished that day. So you learned to work fast for one thing. But I got turned down quite a few places in Chicago when I tried to get a summer job. But you know you just keep pushing along and you find something. Because working in a factory doing those lamps was kind of rough. The language was bad, the manners were bad, and that was the first exposure I had to working in a factory.

RP: Factory work. Originally you said you thought you were going to Manzanar. Not, not Santa Anita.

MK: Well, that was the rumor that we were all supposed to go to Manzanar, that first group. But the barracks weren't finished. But...

RP: So you ended up at...

MK: You figured all those southern California people that might have gone to Manzanar, they were in Santa Anita. But you know, L.A. had a big harbor there and everything and I think they were just kind of anxious to get people gathered up.

RP: Right.

<Begin Segment 8>

RP: And where did you end up in Santa Anita originally?

MK: Because they didn't know where else to put us. Tanforan was not existing then.

RP: You were in the horse stalls for a while.

MK: We were in the horse stalls and then because my sister needed to be close to the hospital they moved us to barracks that they erected in the parking lot.

RP: And where was the hospital located?

MK: The jockey accommodations. That was the hospital. And there were quite a few doctors already and nurses and they more or less worked around the clock when it was necessary. But we all got our typhoid shots and everything else.

RP: And you got those at Santa Anita?

MK: Yeah.

RP: Okay.

MK: But it's a wonder we didn't have more illnesses running through the camp. But we didn't. I can just remember one, it was either scarlet fever or whooping cough and it was just one barrack. And they were isolated.

RP: Can you, you spent some time at Santa Anita working?

MK: Yeah. 'Cause I was sixteen. You're allowed to work. And they had these little structures they put up and called 'em milk stations and we provided the mothers with baby food and formula. And then as the, they shut down... as they moved the people out to the Midwest or what have you, Colorado and so forth, I went to work in the mess hall.

RP: Oh, the orange mess hall?

MK: Yeah. But we didn't, I mean you went through the line to get your food so we didn't have to serve the food. We just had to pick up after people. But you're young, you can do it.

RP: You also were a pretty avid reader too, weren't you?

MK: What?

RP: You were a pretty avid reader. You said you kind of parked in the library.

MK: Because there was nothing else to do. There was no school in Santa Anita. And then by the time we got to Topaz they were setting up school already there. And we had some very good teachers. We had some that weren't so good. Anybody who had some college education was... like my husband, he taught history and math.

RP: And that was after camp?

MK: At camp.

RP: At camp?

MK: At camp.

RP: Oh, in Topaz. No not... where was it?

MK: I mean, not everybody had teacher credential but if they were capable they, they taught. Well, just like, oh, I can't remember his name right off, Obata or something like that, out of Berkeley, he taught art, he taught art in camp while he was there. And we had at our church we had a man who was a very good tailor. And he taught sewing. And our choir leader was somebody who was a music major. He was very good at the job too. And we had, I think it was pretty good. There were a lot of subjects covered.

RP: Now your husband's experience was a little different. He went to Tanforan, didn't he?

MK: He went to camp later, toward the end of April I think. But he went to Tanforan. By that time they were using the horse stalls at Tanforan. And then, and most of the Bay Area people went straight to Topaz, Utah, from there. It was like forty barracks. We had school. There was a hospital set up. They had separate barracks for the people who came into, the Caucasians who came in to work. But I give them credit for going to the camps though. Because it was isolated and I'm sure their food was better but outside of that they had to put up with all the winter, hard winters and snow and dust storms and everything else that we did.

RP: The San Francisco group really had some serious adaptations to make coming from the Bay Area.

MK: We never saw snow until we went to Utah. And I didn't know what a dust storm was until it blew there. Yeah. But you know, being young you learn to cope with a lot of things and adapt to it all. It was much easier for say my age group and the schoolchildren more than the older ones.

RP: The older people.

<Begin Segment 9>

RP: So you were in Santa Anita for about six months probably?

MK: Yes, from April to beginning of October.

RP: And then the idea was that you should be along with San Francisco people so you got sent to Topaz.

MK: Yes. So, we met up with a lot of our friends again. Right.

RP: And just like Santa Anita, you were, you ended up living near the hospital because your sister...

MK: Because of my sister.

RP: ...worked there.

MK: So we lived near the hospital in Newpa, in Topaz.

RP: And was she an RN at that point or was she...

MK: She was just short of having her RN. So she was training. She had gone through all the training that UC Hospital had for their nursing staff. At UC, they went to UC Berkeley for two years and spent three years living in the dormitory at, on Parnasus, where UC Hospital is, UC San Francisco. And so then they worked in all the different fields. They also had to work night shifts. They had to work, like they were regular nurses and everything. So...

RP: She was a pretty valuable asset to...

MK: She was.

RP: ... a situation like that.

MK: And then when she left camp, because I was in the Midwest, she went to work for Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago. She didn't have her RN, but she knew what she was doing.

RP: Right. Uh-huh. You mentioned this group of twelve people.

MK: Yeah.

RP: These were friends from San Francisco?

MK: No, actually most of them I knew... I met them in camp. And we participated in the same activities, like the choir and things like this. And I guess, I think personality wise we must have all been more or less the same. There wasn't anybody that was extra rowdy or anything like this. We were kind of a quiet group to begin with. But almost all of the whole group went off to college.

RP: From Topaz?

MK: From Topaz. Yeah. And then of course then the fellows got drafted into the army. But they all went back to college when they got through. Yeah.

RP: Do you keep in touch with any of these folks anymore?

MK: Quite a few of them.

RP: Do you get together occasionally?

MK: And quite a few... well, no, but we all made it a point to go to every Topaz reunion. And we used to say gee, maybe we'd better keep having reunions so we see each other. And I still keep in touch with quite a few of 'em. And of course some of 'em have passed away.

RP: So, being in a group with that kind of a coping mechanism for...

MK: It was the first time I had been in a group of all Japanese people. And going to Santa Anita was kind of a shock because we had never been in a group of, where it was all people of Japanese ancestry. And in a way I think it broadened my horizons there because I was put in situations that I had never been in before. So, whereas if you lived in Japantown you ran around with your friends and everything else like this. Like Koji had his friends. And where we lived we were kind of scattered so it was just these group picnics and things like that where we would see everybody all at once at the same time.

RP: Once in a while too.

MK: Yeah, right.

[Interruption]

RP: This is tape two of a continuing interview with Michiko, and Michiko we were just discussing about how you kind of had to watch your step if you grew up in Japantown in San Francisco. But you were isolated from that community.

MK: Yeah.

RP: And...

MK: Because our friend, the families that were around us, we didn't sit around and gossip so to speak.

RP: So when you got to Topaz and you were amongst all Japanese Americans, did you feel you, like you had to watch your step again?

MK: No, you know, even our church was not like that. There were quite a few people from Japantown who went to the church but I don't remember. 'Course you, we always had our parents who always say you don't do things to shame us. That was our culture. So, but you know, the... when we came out of camp we lived in the Richmond District near Golden Gate Park. We bought a house there eventually. And so when you go to work you make a lot of friends from other backgrounds and everything. And after we moved and moved down to L.A.... we were exposed to more of a Caucasian style of living, so to speak. We moved to Huntington Beach because it was a little more diversified than other areas. And we wanted our children to... not to, well, to be tolerant of everybody, so to speak. And seeing as how my husband was in the education field, we were more conscientious of that I think.

<Begin Segment 10>

RP: I'm gonna just return to Topaz for a little bit longer and then we'll get back to...

MK: Yeah, you know, I wasn't there that long. Just for my senior year in high school and I left shortly after that.

RP: Right. And tell us, share with us a little bit about what your feelings were about your educational experience during that last year in Topaz High.

MK: Yeah. I was in this one core class. We had this teacher who was fresh out of college and decided she would teach in camp. She was good. In fact, we had her for two hours every day because English and core, history and we just called it core. And she had the enthusiasm and she really drove our class. And everybody said, "Oh, your class is her favorite class," is how they put it. But I think because she was willing to work so hard with us, I think that's why we all excelled and a lot of us went on to college when we left camp. Until she passed away couple a years ago, she was in assisted living in Castro Valley and the group that got together with her every April, it was her birthday, it was mostly people that were in the core class. And of course once she passed away then we don't meet that often or anything, but the closeness is still there among us.

RP: What was her name?

MK: Eleanor Gerard. And then she married another teacher. His name, last name was Sacurak. Another good one was Dr. Goodman. I think he taught science. I can't remember anybody, outside of the choir leader, his name was Eddie Ino. Gee, he was good. And I can't believe that we sang the Hallelujah Chorus at Christmas. He whipped us. Koji said it was the best group he had ever heard in a high school, my husband said that. And he said too bad we didn't have a recording of it. I wish we had. But you know, I think I was fortunate in that I had these people who were driven to make us excel. Because you could have just sat there and done nothing. You would have gone automatically onto the next grade and everything like that. I had a shorthand teacher. And I thought what a, you know, what am I gonna do with shorthand? But you know you were just taking classes to fill up the day really. But by golly, she drove us. I made an A in that class and I thought oh my gosh, what's shorthand gonna do for me? But I think too that a lot of the people who were on the faculty, I think they realized that we had to make something of ourselves. I didn't feel like, I didn't feel mediocre. I knew they were pushing us. But then my mother was a teacher in Japan for a couple of years in a grammar school or something. Anyway, well she always pushed education. And I think it worked well with the group that I was in.

RP: How, how did the process work out that you were able to leave Topaz and continue...

MK: I beg your pardon?

RP: How did the process evolve that allowed you to leave Topaz and continue your education?

MK: The Quakers were granting scholarships. And this very good friend of mine was working with the Quakers. And he was... anybody he thought that would make it in college, he came around and he spoke to the parents and everything. My father didn't want me to go. My mother said yes, and that's the only reason I went. Because I'd never been out of the, the state of California before I went to Utah. And I was traveling, I was going to school with another good friend of mine that was in this group. Unfortunately she only went one year and then she moved to Minnesota where her sister had relocated. And, but there were two other Nisei girls who went to school there. And so it wasn't like I was the only Asian.

RP: And what was that gentleman's name?

MK: It's a Presbyterian college, Hanover College.

RP: Hanover, did you say?

MK: In Hanover, Indiana.

RP: Oh, okay.

MK: It's on, right on the Ohio River.

RP: Okay.

MK: It's more like southern influence because when we went there we were the first Asians. There were no people of color. They worked there but they weren't students there. But we must have broke the barrier. That college has foreign students from all over the world now. I think they encouraged it to happen. And when I get all these alumni news things and everything it's just a wonder that you see so many different races among the students. But I think too that it's a Presbyterian college and I think they worked harder at it, to broaden everybody's idea of who should be there and the kind of people you should get to know and all this kind of stuff.

RP: Just stepping back a little bit, did you have a graduation ceremony in Topaz?

MK: We had, with gowns, caps and gowns and everything. Yeah.

RP: And a prom.

MK: We had a junior prom, I mean a senior prom, yeah. So...

RP: And...

MK: It all came off real good. And then, course then all the other classes did the same. We had a yearbook. And we had a, we had a paper too. I worked on the paper. I worked on the yearbook. Because I had worked in junior high school, at Francisco junior high, I worked on the school paper there, and I enjoyed it. And then when we went to camp... well, you had to do something with your time, not just sit around, just go to school and then go home and do nothing. The, the boys had sports. I don't, some of the girls had sports. I remember some playing basketball and things like that. I wasn't so inclined that way.

RP: Did you or any other members of your family have any creative outlets at Topaz? Did you an outlet for your creativity? Arts and crafts or...

MK: No I didn't do that. I was just trying to think what I did after school. Well the choir, we had practice almost every day. I think that's why it sounded so good. And then Saturdays we just, well, I remember helping my mother with the washing and things like that. Because my two older sisters were working full time anyway. And then Chiz left camp and went to BYU.

RP: Right.

MK: Yeah. 'Cause her boyfriend was there. But...

RP: You said you worked in the library for a short period of time.

MK: After graduation, I worked in the library until I left camp. Yeah. And it was, it was an easy job because, well, like the kids, most of the children that were out in sports, they were out doing that and we didn't have a full library to begin with. It was like donated books and things of that sort. But I think I was lucky to have a job even if it was for a short time. Eight dollars a month.

RP: You took one trip to Delta too out of camp.

MK: I can only remember going once and it was more or less just to, I think we took our lunches and just to walk around the town and do a little bit of shopping. And I have to say, the town people were, they accepted the fact that we were there. There is a Topaz museum in Delta now, and I don't know how complete it is yet. We make kind of annual donations, a lot of us. But this Jane Beckwith, have you met her? Yeah. She's the one. She's the moving force behind it.

RP: Yeah, she's a mover and shaker. Yeah.

MK: So she's always come to the Topaz reunions and things. And then our senior class had some money sitting there so then there was a samurai exhibit at the Asian Museum San Francisco, and she came all the way over for that. It was good to see her.

<Begin Segment 11>

RP: So, where did you leave for college? Did you catch the train from Delta? When you, when you left to go to college in Indiana?

MK: I lived in the dormitory.

RP: Oh I...

MK: No, I'm sorry.

RP: How did you travel to Indiana?

MK: Oh, by train. I don't know who paid my train fare, I really don't know. But we had to take one train to Chicago and then we took a train from Chicago to Scottsburg, Indiana and the president's two daughters drove all the way over there -- it was like an hour's drive -- to pick us up. And that first year, because my sister was not there, there was always somebody who was kind enough to say, "Come spend the vacation with me." And I would go to people's homes, like Christmas and spring break and things like that. And then by the time June rolled around my sister was there so then I went to Chicago whenever we had vacation. But you know, it was... some people, I say some people, we had just a handful of men there because it was during wartime. And like our graduating class only had thirty-two people and maybe half a dozen male students. But it was a small enough place that we would call a cab and we would go into the Madison, town of Madison that was right next door. And we would go to the movies, maybe eat out, things like that. But the campus itself was really nice. And there were lots of places we could hike down to the Ohio River. Sundays we had dinner at noon and then we packed sandwiches and things for our supper. And we would just go hiking. And they kept up the campus really nice. And it isn't like we had to just sit in the dorm 'cause there was no place to go. And then we would go visit the, well, we went to the Presbyterian church in Hanover. So, and I was in the choir for a little while, not very long. But I had to work in the kitchen and I worked on serving the tables and things like that.

RP: And you spent four years...

MK: I spent four years there.

RP: ... at, at the college?

MK: Yeah.

RP: And what did you gain from that experience?

MK: Well, I majored in science. Maybe I should have majored in something else. But because coming back to San Francisco, they couldn't help me look for a job. And the best he could do for me was just to give me the names and addresses of the big companies and things like that. And I tried out for civil service and what have you and I really... teaching might have been a better field to go into. Because I think I could have gotten a teaching job easier. But...

RP: Biology was what you majored in there?

MK: I majored in biology, yeah. I liked it.

RP: And so this was the first time that you were...

MK: You know, yeah, but you know I got a B.A. so that doesn't really qualify you for much unless you excelled say like in math or something like this. Then you can always get a job that way. But because I know that there was a friend who, she went to college for two years and then she went to teach in a grammar school in Indiana. And I thought, gee, you only need two years to teach in a grammar school? And I thought, oh, I think maybe, maybe I majored the wrong way. But you know when you got a bachelor of arts you have all of these requirement courses you have to take and it doesn't really train you for anything. But so be it.

RP: That was the, that was the first time you were on your own, too.

MK: Yeah.

RP: How did that feel?

MK: The first year was hard. And after that it was all right. But you figured though... see, there was no family structure in camp. Because my mother and father worked in the mess hall, we didn't see them all day long. We just went to school and did our activities and the only time we're together... we didn't eat together. We didn't do anything together. And I think that destroyed the family structure for us, for a lot of the Japanese families. Because then as we finished high school we all went our separate ways. A lot of the fellows were drafted and what have you and then we scattered all over the U.S. because we're lucky enough to get the grants for college. So I had friends who were in school here and there and every place and we tried to keep in touch with each other but it gets hard after a while. But I still have some of those friends yet. Yeah.

RP: You had one occasion where you had to go back to Topaz.

MK: My father had a ruptured appendix. And we were kind of angry about that because he went in and it was not ruptured and one doctor said he can wait until morning. One doctor said no, he should be operated on right now. Well, the other doctor was the chief surgeon so they waited until morning and it ruptured. But a very good friend of my sister's was also a nurse at the hospital, and she took very good care of him. 'Cause you know, a ruptured appendix, everything spreads all over the place. And so he had to take it easy for six months. And by that time he was already in his... gee, that was about my second year of college, so it was either '44 or '45 so you figure he was in his sixties when it happened. I think what helped him was that he had never been sick in his life, and he was able to pull through it. Plus, all the good care he got from our friend. 'Cause some people die from it. It just bursts and spreads all over. But we're a hardy race to begin with.

RP: So you, you came back to San Francisco in...

MK: I came back after college.

RP: After college and your...

MK: I spent oh, most of that summer, because my father was convalescing and my sister couldn't leave her nursing job in Chicago. So, and she was worried that maybe he might over do it and try to go back to work too soon and all that kind of stuff. But I, you had the roof over your head. You got the three meals a day anyway, whether you were working or not. And it's just that eight dollars, that salary wasn't there.

RP: So you were there almost the whole summer?

MK: Most of the summer.

RP: What did you do...

MK: I went back to school.

RP: What did you do with your time?

MK: Oh no, I just sat around and ...

RP: Watched.

MK: ...made sure he didn't do anything.

RP: Okay.

MK: And then tried to do whatever, help my mother. Because we had no washing machines. It was all hand washing. And then you had to iron in those days. Keep your own place clean. If the dust came up you just had to sit it out and then clean up after the dust and things like that. Yeah.

<Begin Segment 12>

RP: So you came back to San Francisco in 1947?

MK: Yes.

RP: Roughly. And so your parents had come out of camp.

MK: The, because the camps closed in...

RP: '45.

MK: '45 I think. Oh yeah, because my younger sister finished high school in 1945. And they left camp after that. I don't remember exactly what month it was.

RP: What did, what did your husband do in camp?

MK: He was teaching. He taught history and math and then in the summer he would, they had summer camp for high school people. And he went out. I don't remember if he... I don't remember what year he left camp. 'Cause that was '43 I graduated. He must have been there a couple of years and then he went out to Milwaukee. He didn't like the job there so he went to Chicago. And like I said, he worked for Hall House. And that was a settlement house so to speak, and they created a job for him there. What he had been doing was he was teaching, he was working in the gym at Sears at that time. They had a physical program going, physical ed. program going. And then he got his draft notice in Chicago so he came back to Topaz because he wanted to be with all his friends, in the same group. And they went to Texas for the basic training. And from there they went to Fort Snelling. And they had a real fast course in Japanese. You were supposed to have some knowledge of Japanese and he had very little knowledge of Japanese at that time. But he had picked up enough that he was able to work with the occupation in Japan. He worked censoring written material and the mail and stuff like that. And then he worked with the schools. Because they had to teach English. Yeah. And then he took a civilian job for about two years. And then he decided that he had been gone from home too long already. And he had to get back. So I think he was maybe close to four years or something he was in Japan.

RP: And did you know him in Topaz at all?

MK: I knew his sisters. And no, I didn't associate with him in Topaz. And...

RP: So how did you two meet up eventually?

MK: Well, because I would be visiting his sisters. And when he came back from army and everything then I, we got to know each other then. But besides, he always had his girlfriends anyway. [Laughs] No, he came down to, after he finished Berkeley he went to USC. And so he went back to San Francisco and worked for... oh gee... he had a job counseling with the Catholic church. I can't tell you where it was though. But he kind of had a falling out with the Catholic church about birth control. And he went to work for Children's Bureau in Los Angeles.

RP: And what was that? Was that an adoption agency?

MK: Let's see... we got married in '53, 1953 he went to work for the Children's Bureau in Los Angeles. And like I said, I was working for an insurance company at that time. And when we were bringing home the same paycheck we knew we couldn't make a go of it that way. So using Cal-Vet and GI Bill he went back to SC and got his teaching credential. Then he kept going to school at night to... at that time you had to have... he was lucky he got... people pushed him into administration. He wound up as a counselor. You had to have teaching credential for grammar school all the way through high school if you wanted to go into these other fields. And plus the fact that your pay depended on your taking I think two credits a semester. Like one class at night. So he did that for years until he hit forty-two and he said he was tired of going to school. And then computers came up. And we figured the future was in computers rather than being a vice principal. And so that's what he did for L.A. City Schools. He set up the report cards, all the, I think attendance was switched over to computers eventually. He... they used to program all the classes by hand, and then that went on the computers. So he stayed with the computers until he retired, 1986.

<Begin Segment 13>

RP: And you, in 1961, you moved down to Huntington Beach?

MK: Yeah, because, do you remember the Watts riots?

RP: Yes, oh very vividly.

MK: All right, at that time we were living outside of Gardena. It was an unincorporated area of L.A. Our children were going to school and it was getting kind of rough. Our oldest son was in junior high school. He would not even take lunch money with him. He said no, that he'll get stopped and most of the Japanese kids, they got stopped. Especially the boys. And they would take their lunch money. They would take their lunch. He, I said, "Well you have to pick up your gym clothes after school." And he said, "I'll come home once and I'll get the money and then I'll go back to school and get my gym clothes." His tennis shoes disappeared someplace. Things like that. And we were just lucky that he was a big enough kid that he didn't get picked on that much. A lot of the Japanese boys were on the smaller side and even if it wasn't school, I mean, I know one of his friends got stopped just walking to and from the library. And there went the money, the wristwatch, whatever. And I thought well, we needed a bigger house to begin with. And I spent one summer just driving all over. We drew a perimeter. I had to go out of the perimeter to find that house in Huntington Beach.

RP: You had some issues with your ethnicity too, in respect to finding a...

MK: Yeah, and it, the student body was quite a mixture. And because Huntington Beach was mostly agriculture in the early days. It was either that or oil, one or the other. And then, so there was, there was a lot of Asians moving into Orange County at that time. We were one of the first ones to move into Orange County. But there was this one Sakioka and he was a big farmer in Orange County. That's how come they got the land for the, that and this other family, Caucasian family, they raised lima beans and what have you. And they're lying, between those two families, that's how come Orange County has a concert hall, a playhouse and all this kind of stuff.

RP: Right. Art Sakioka.

MK: Yeah. And that big South Coast Mall, this Caucasian family started it. Then they built the Crystal Court across the street. It's really nice in that area. Plus you're only, we were only twenty minutes from Disneyland, two miles from the beach. I think my kids were fortunate growing up where they did.

RP: How were, how were you accepted initially in Huntington Beach?

MK: I beg your pardon?

RP: How were you accepted in Huntington Beach?

MK: We were the first Orientals to buy in our tract. And a lot of the families that were in that same area near Watts, first they said, "How come you're moving so far?" And all this kind of... one by one, the families were moving out to Orange County. A lot moved out to Long Beach, in that area, Cypress. But no, everything was all right. They accepted us. It was nice. Huntington Beach, at that time, was a small town. You could go and you write a check. You didn't have to show any I.D. or anything. And it changed the face of the, the Asian face changed when they accepted all the Vietnamese refugees. And then we all got lumped together. They couldn't, they couldn't tell the difference. People couldn't tell the difference. But if they had observed us, they would have seen that we were more like the Caucasians. When you went to a mall, a lot of the refugees would just walk through there like a house on fire. They didn't care who they bumped into or anything. Their manners were terrible. I was appalled. And then to get lumped in with them was even worse. 'Course, the ones that came with money, they were different and a lot of them came with money. 'Cause they moved to Irvine, places like that. The kids were, went to college. And they raised the standards at all the schools that they attended. And I could remember being in a department store and these two women had their little kids running around the china department. And it got on my nerves so badly. I couldn't just stand there and wait my turn. And I said, "I'm sorry, but your boys cannot run around this department like that." Because the salespeople aren't, weren't allowed to say anything to the customers. And after they left she goes, "Oh, thank heavens you were standing there." Well, she was getting nervous. I was getting nervous too that something was gonna wind up on the floor in a thousand pieces and all that kind of stuff. But I kind of resented the fact that I got lumped in with all those refugees and they weren't kind to us in the store. They would ignore us. I'd have to go look for somebody to wait on me. If you went into Nordstrom it was different because they didn't shop at Nordstrom.

RP: At any other store.

MK: But you know like, a lot of the other... May Company and places like that. I thought, I couldn't even get somebody to wait on me. And I, and I was dressed nicely. I dressed up when I went to the store. Then pretty soon I got sloppy about it because I thought well if they're gonna treat me like that I don't have to do that anymore. And our neighbors were just super. They said if we close our eyes you wouldn't know that we were Asian, Japanese. Because we did everything the same way everybody else did.

RP: ...else did, right.

<Begin Segment 14>

RP: So when did you start going to the Topaz reunions?

MK: Whenever they had them. We went to every one that they had. It was...

RP: Were you involved in the planning or development of those?

MK: They were in, in the Bay Area.

RP: Oh, it started in the Bay Area?

MK: San Francisco, San Jose. We had a four camp reunion in Sacramento a few years back. I guess most of them were in San Francisco. My younger sister's class, when they graduated, they said, "Every five years we will have a reunion." And they have had it. Every time there was a Topaz reunion they had their own reunion besides that. The Topaz faculty had a reunion. And so we were at that faculty reunion too.

RP: When was that?

MK: This woman had a house in... oh, San Leandro is it? In the east bay? She bought this house that had a huge recreation room and we all pot-lucked. And so then all these older people, we all got together. We'd go to the Topaz reunion and then we'd go to the faculty reunion. And I'm, to this day if they say Topaz reunion, I'll be there. Yeah. But you know, it was the younger people that were organizing and doing all the work and I think they got tired of doing it. But it was, it was a real good affair for us older ones. And then you find out who is still active and what have you. Because being in the late eighties here it's, we've lost a lot of friends. Especially the last three, four years. Because see, my husband was one of the younger ones in the Topaz faculty.

RP: Right.

MK: Yeah. 'Cause there were some people who had actually finished Berkeley already. But at least he went back to school and finished.

RP: Finished, right.

MK: Yeah. I'm sitting here slumped and I shouldn't do that.

RP: What was your impressions and feelings of, about the redress?

MK: I didn't think it would really happen. But you know, the people that worked on it, they really did a bang up job. They stuck with it, they pushed, they got influential people to speak up. A lot of like Koji's age group, a lot of 'em they, they really worked hard on it. The part I regret is that the first generation, a lot of them had passed away when it went through. And they were the ones who really suffered the most. When they first came to the U.S. they had to struggle and make a living and all this kind of stuff. They lost everything when evacuation came up. And then they had to put up with living in camp. And I really felt bad that they didn't get it. That they were no longer living. So, it's, I'm... you won't say well, because they were in camp the family would get the money... it isn't a case of where we needed the money. We just needed the acknowledgement that it was wrong.

RP: And how did that feel when you got that?

MK: I was kind of relieved. Because it made people aware of what happened to us. A lot of people didn't know. Because even when we moved to Huntington Beach, my neighbor next door came from the East Coast. She didn't know anything about the camps. And I thought gee, she should have known something. If you were in California you would have known. Like being, when we went to the movies or what have you in Madison, Indiana, people would just stop and stare. Because they had never seen an Asian. But it's funny, when you stop and think about it. My brother-in-law said this. He said, "You know, you can go to some small towns, there'll always be a Chinese restaurant and you can eat rice." He went like that. Yeah. And it's true. You find a Chinese restaurant in an odd place. We go through Valley Springs. There's a Chinese restaurant in there. And it's just a small town. But and it's crowded. People are eating. We don't go to the Chinese... we go to Quiznos or a coffee shop, something like this. I'm looking for something else besides Asian food.

RP: Right.

<Begin Segment 15>

RP: So, how did, how did the camp experience shape the rest of your life?

MK: Gee, that's hard to say. Because I was in there not too long. It gave me the opportunity to travel. I had never met anybody with feelings for the South. And I could understand when they started complaining that they were getting prejudiced against and everything. It, until I went to Indiana I didn't realize how bad it was. And when you just see them working but not in school, that made a big impression on me and I thought that's not right. And I doubt... you know, actually, I don't think I suffered that much because we went to camp. Because it, I got exposed to a lot of different things by leaving camp. And different people's attitudes and things that I didn't stop to think about before when I was young. I think it made me more tolerant, more accepting of how people are. I think, too, because I wanted them to accept me as I was, not as they expected me to be. And I think that's why we've all survived so well for one thing. So... and I hope the generations come... have learned something from it. Our children have.

RP: Did you...

MK: They accept a lot more things right away. They don't look for, they don't walk around looking for what people don't do. They just expect everybody to function in the normal way, like they do. They don't let the Japanese background reflect on how they think or what they do or anything.

RP: How about your own kids?

MK: Yeah. My own kids. I think they learned a lot from our generation. And I think that the hard part is that, like our grandchildren are only one-fourth Japanese now. They will probably marry Caucasians. And then it will go one-eighth. Well, it can, it will, it'll just kind of fade out I think. Our, my generation tended to marry... there wasn't too much inter-marriage there. My children, unless the parents pushed, they did not marry Asian. We didn't push. Our grandchildren, you see some of the Asian features in their appearance, in their mannerisms too. Because they can't help it, they're exposed to me. Our great-grandchildren, I don't see any Asian in them. But it's gonna be that way. In especially in the USA it's such a hodge-podge anymore. In a way it's good. In a way it's kind of sad because you see a lot of the culture disappear. But so be it. I mean, that's the way the world should be, just universal. So...

RP: Do you have any other questions or thoughts?

KP: No.

RP: I think on that note, that note of harmony we're gonna...

MK: I beg your pardon?

RP: We're gonna, we're gonna complete our interview. That'll be it. We want to thank you, Kirk, myself, and the National Park Service, for sharing your feelings and stories with us today.