<Begin Segment 4>

KL: So your father's life, a lot of it, anyway, was work, in his childhood, in his early teen years and stuff.

HK: Yes. In fact, he had to work so much he couldn't even finish high school, 'cause he was always busy driving tractors and trucks. He had to drive the fruit all the way to Reno, or to Sacramento. He had to drive, most of their fruit he had to deliver, so he was very busy working very hard. And so he had to quit high school even, so he wasn't able to graduate from high school until my youngest sister graduated. 'Cause he went back to night school, and then when my youngest sister graduated, he wanted to graduate, so he graduated at that time from high school.

KL: Wow, that's impressive.

HK: He wanted to go to school, and he did a lot of studying on his own. He had all these books about astrology and science and mechanics, and I think he would've been a good scientist. And he sent his younger brother, Joseph, all the way through law school, and he became a lawyer. So they said he just worked hard for his family.

KL: Where were they in school when they were children? What was the high school?

HK: I think they went to Placer High School. Or, I'm not sure, either, I know my mother went to Roseville High School, (...) there were only two high schools in that area at that time, and --

KL: Did -- oh, go ahead.

HK: But I know my uncle, Joe, I think probably went to Placer High School, and he was an honors student and then he went to UC Berkeley. And I met people later on, when they found out what my maiden name was, they said, "Oh, are you related to Joe Omachi?" I said he's my uncle, and he says, "I remember he was one of the outstanding students at UC Berkeley." So he was considered a good scholar, or good student. So he graduated from UC Berkeley, became a lawyer, and then his son too, I remember his son Rodney was valedictorian of his class in Stockton and won a full scholarship to Stanford University and then to Harvard University Medical School, and he became a doctor. So I think that if my father was able to go to school he probably would've become a professor or a scientist or something.

KL: Do you have any sense of what that was like for him? I mean, hearing about his younger brother who was pretty close in age to him, that, hearing about Joe's accomplishments, kind of with the support of your dad, do you know what that was like for your dad, to be the one who was working to enable that?

HK: I think he supported him because I think he realized that something was (...) quite amiss among the family, as far as his father's property and all this type of thing, so I think he thought that sending his younger brother to become a lawyer, maybe he could find out, you know, the laws and so forth. 'Cause, as I said, my father didn't even graduate from high school, but he knew the laws were what determined what happened a lot.

KL: Yeah. I was listening to an oral history on the way here, related to someone who was very connected to the United Farm Workers, and that person was talking a lot about how -- and he became a lawyer, and he was talking a lot about how important that was to his uncle and his father that he work really hard and have that understanding of law.

HK: Yeah.

KL: Or of medicine, he said was the other alternative to really impact the world around his life and his family's. That's interesting.

HK: Well, I think that's the way, my father felt the same way too. So he was happy to send his brother to law school because he thought that would help their situation, because he realized that he was working hard but they were very poor and, whereas his (sister) and their family were pretty well off. [Laughs]

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.