<Begin Segment 17>

SK: Okay, now, what life was like at...

KL: Yeah, the rest of your parents' lives. I mean, we talked about their background and their time in Tule Lake.

SK: Okay. We returned to Placer County, and then we were at this one place, and Mrs. Fountain heard that we were back. So she came looking for us and asked us to move back to her ranch. And my father, oh, he's so funny, he thought of one condition. In those days we didn't have running water inside? I guess we did have running water, but we didn't have electricity. He says, "We'll go back if you put electricity," and she says okay. And that was a huge, huge concession, because from the main road, the county road, up to the house, it must have been about two miles. And so, but she had electricity put in, and on that condition, we moved back to that ranch. [Laughs] And that's the place where I say they're building their million dollars homes now.

KL: Yeah. Why did she want them to come back? Because they were good workers or because they had a friendly relationship?

SK: Right, right. She already knew...

KL: So they went back there.

SK: So we went back there. And then when I went to San Mateo, I left from there.

KL: And you moved back there, did your parents live there the rest of their lives?

SK: No. Then I don't know when, but she sold the property to this retiree teacher, and I don't know what, you don't know what you're getting yourself into. But anyway, and then so they moved from there to Penryn, and from Penryn to Loomis. And so that's where they spent their... oh, and then my brother Taku had a house built, after he came back from the army and got a job, and he was the second one who graduated from college. He went to the University of Illinois. But anyway, he became a librarian as well. He had built the house in Roseville and then he moved my mother there. By then my father had passed away.

KL: Did your father remain really active in kind of the world around him, or was that different after he left Tule Lake?

SK: Very interesting. He got really, really sick and he didn't know what was causing it. And he went to L.A. to learn jou-rei. You've heard of reiki? Well, this is a variation of reiki. Instead of hands-on, you keep your hand above the person. And he learned that, and that's what cured him. And we were on this ranch again in Loomis, and he had to spray the crops and I think that that was what was making him sick.

KL: Did either of your parents ever become U.S. citizens?

SK: No, no.

KL: No interest. Did they ever go visit Japan?

SK: My mother did, but my father never made it to Japan. And, in fact, my father, when he came, after the war, and came out of camp, Japan had lost the war, he couldn't be a U.S. citizen at that time, and he says, "I'm an American Indian."

KL: He did? He told people that?

SK: Uh-huh.

KL: He's not the only one.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2015 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.