<Begin Segment 27>

KL: Where did you come back to?

HK: I remember we came back, we took the southern route because of the wintertime, and (...) my father always rented a truck and put all our things, including the piano, and we drove all the way, I remember we came to Pasadena, California, and it was on New Year's Day, right after the Rose Parade. And we were looking out and we were saying, "Why is this place so dirty? There's trash all over." It was right after the Rose Bowl parade, and we had just missed the parade, but then all the debris and trash was still on the streets. We said, "Gee, California's kind of a dirty place." [Laughs] That was our impression of California. But we drove from Pasadena all the way up to Loomis, and actually Penryn was where my father had found a rental house, a house that we could live in that he could (farm), it was mainly fruit there too, pears and peaches and apricots.

KL: Did you go by the site of your house in Loomis that had burned? Do you remember going back there?

HK: (Yes). I think our relatives had rebuilt it, a new house there. And so we had no place to go back to. That's what I was saying.

KL: They were back on that forty-five acres of your grandfather's.

HK: (Yes), but none of that went to my father, and so he rented this place, or was doing the same, farming and renting the house. And when he saved up enough, then he finally bought two acres with a house, a two-story house in Loomis, with his savings.

KL: When was that?

HK: That was in nineteen, let's see, I think it was about 1952. A couple of (years), about 1952.

KL: What can you tell us about the role that the church, First United Methodist Church of Loomis, played during the camp years and then in people's return to Loomis, those who came back earlier, like in '45 or '6?

HK: I think the church was very important to the Japanese Americans, mainly for, not only worship and community gatherings and helping each other. But I remember when we came back to church we felt a little bit embarrassed because everybody was dressed better than we were. [Laughs] We were wearing all our homemade clothes. My mother was a good seamstress, but we made all our own clothes, but compared to other people, our shoes and things were very shabby. But we always had nice dresses. It was kind of an adjustment because we felt like people were kind of always staring at us.

KL: The church survived, the building survived your absence and stuff.

HK: Yes.

KL: Did people store stuff there, do you know?

HK: Probably so.

KL: Or was it a hostel or anything?

HK: I think probably. I don't recall that much about it, 'cause we were actually living in Penryn when we came back, and then when we moved back to Loomis it was a couple years later.

KL: And it was a different time then, too, I mean as far as...

HK: And by then, too, my mother got a job with the army depot, signal army depot in Sacramento, 'cause she was a very good bookkeeper. And so she got a full-time job there, and my father got a job at Campbell's Soup in Sacramento. So they commuted from Loomis to Sacramento every day.

KL: What was that like for them, to have full-time jobs outside of their home and teaching and not farming?

HK: Well, I think they felt like they could get their life together and make a decent living. Because they were worried about having enough money for us to go to college.

KL: So in '52, when you, or in '50, when you moved back, you were like thirteen or fourteen?

HK: I was in eighth grade.

KL: And where did you go to high school?

HK: First, when we were living in Penryn, I went to Placer High School in Auburn. Then when we moved to Loomis, then I went to Roseville High School, and that was the high school that my mother graduated from.

KL: What was it like? What are your memories of it?

HK: I remember I enjoyed Roseville more than I did Placer High School, I think, 'cause people were very friendly. I was able to make friends. I enjoyed the school there.

KL: I found an article from 1945 in the Rocky Shimpo from Colorado about a house burning in Loomis, a Japanese American returning family's house burning. Did you ever hear people talking, your friends or parents of your friends about what those years were like in the Loomis area, that you were gone? Do you have a sense for what it was like to return right at the end of the war for Japanese Americans? Or did you ever encounter any residual hostility in the early '50s?

HK: No, because by the '50s most all the Japanese families had returned before, and so (we) were kind of actually late in coming back. But you read about a house burning in...

KL: Yeah, I'll show you, I'll show you afterwards.

HK: I'd like to see that.

KL: The person's name... let's see, Mr. and Mrs. Kay Sakamoto, it was burned around October of 1945.

HK: Oh, Sakamotos. (Yes), I remember the Sakamoto family.

KL: That was the report, at least, in the paper, that their house was burned. And it sounded like an arson.

HK: I didn't know about other people's homes being burned, but I just know that our house burned, so that's why we didn't have a house to come back to.

KL: And that your dad saw that as an arson, believed that it was, or saw it actually happen, that the soldiers had lit it.

HK: Well, he didn't see anybody do it, but it's just that when we were driving away, leaving, the house was burning. You don't see who does it, you just see smoke comin' up.

KL: So there was nothing left of your possessions or anything in Loomis at all?

HK: No.

KL: I mean, you had been carrying everything with you when you came back.

<End Segment 27> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.