<Begin Segment 26>

KL: Can you bring us up to speed on where the rest of your family went in those years? They left the camps. Did they all go back to California?

HK: My immediate family, my two oldest sisters -- I have pictures of them -- (...) graduated from nursing school and one married a doctor and one married a pharmacist that they met at University of Nebraska.

KL: Oh, they attended University of Nebraska.

HK: So they both got married before we came back to California, or about that time. And so then just my sister and brother above me and then my three sisters below me -- I told you that two of my sisters were born in Nebraska, too.

KL: Did they, your older sisters who attended college there, did they speak about what, socially or, what kind of treatment they received at University of Nebraska?

HK: Well, apparently they liked it, 'cause I think (...) one of the twins graduated with honors -- well, they both graduated from high school with honors. One was valedictorian and one was salutatorian. And then when (one of them), Joan, graduated from nursing school, she scored the highest in the state on her state board exams. So they, I think, (did) very well, what do you say, I think Nebraska was very welcoming to Japanese Americans. 'Cause then their husbands, too, both of their husbands were from Hawaii, and they went there and they finished their schooling there too.

KL: Did they both have Japanese ancestry?

HK: Yes.

KL: Yeah, I think it was one of the schools, during the camp years, that admitted -- I mean, obviously it was, but I think it was part of that sort of placement program.

HK: (Yes), so that, I think Nebraska was a good experience. The only problem was the weather was so harsh. In the wintertime it was so cold, thirty below zero sometimes. And our house didn't have electricity or gas or running water, and the only way we heated the house was (and) to cook (...) we had to use corn cobs, we had to save the corn cobs and dry 'em and cook with that. And then for our, we had a potbelly stove, used coal and corn cobs to keep warm in the wintertime. So we had no electricity; we had to use lamps for lights. (The) only thing we had was a telephone. We had an outdoor toilet again.

KL: Do you, you mentioned crying kind of secretly in Twin Falls and then crying most days in Topaz, did you, did that continue in Nebraska? Or do you think things were --

HK: Nebraska, I remember I enjoyed singing on our truck bed, the flat truck bed. That was my stage and I'd get up there and sing all kinds of songs. [Laughs]

KL: Who was your audience?

HK: The cornfield.

KL: The chickens.

HK: And the chickens and the cow. [Laughs] That was my entertainment.

KL: Was there anything -- I want to hear about your return to California -- was there anything else about Nebraska that you wanted to bring out?

HK: Well, I think particularly my mother was very anxious to come back to California, 'cause it was very hard for her to adjust having to cook with corn cobs and no running water, and sometimes the water pump would freeze and we'd have no water. And so for her that was a very hard adjustment. And then she had contacted, or gotten malaria when she was young, and so she kept having the malaria, the flarebacks... it comes back or something every so many years, and she'd be having the shivers and she had to stay in bed. I remember she suffered with that, especially in the cold, she'd just be freezing. So she had a very hard time adjusting to Nebraska, so she was anxious to come back to California, I think. Well, my father, too. We all were anxious to come back to California, so we came back in 1950, end of December 1950.

KL: That's probably especially good to come back in the middle of a winter, or early winter.

HK: Yes.

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.