<Begin Segment 21>

KL: Well, the other three sort of big questions I have are what were your parents' lives like after Manzanar, where did your family go, what did you do. Same question for Shimpei, and then I wanted to hear about your own adult life.

KN: Well, I think they left camp, I think each family got about twenty-five bucks, right, or something like that. It was tough. They came out, and of course, they (did not have) enough money, so I remember they immediately went out and started banging on doors for gardening jobs. And they had to get a car, so I don't know where they got the money, but they got a 1935 Chevrolet, two-door coupe. And they started going, self-employed. It's all they could do, nobody would loan 'em money or anything. So it was pretty tough, there was a lot of people all in the churches, like in the church, living in the basement. It was maybe three times as big as this, and there'd be twenty families down there. This partition, things hanging down where you could just sleep on the floor. So life was tough.

KL: Where did you guys live?

KN: We lived in Jimmy Ito's parents' home from September to February until we could raise enough money to buy a house. And I still remember in Pasadena, you could only buy in northwest Pasadena. Northwest Pasadena had the highest black density outside of Watts. And all the deeds in that whole area had a clause in this that you could not sell to anybody except a Caucasian. So I know my grandparents, my grandmother befriended a black realtor, Benjamin Harrison, who found a house for us that we bought. I'm not quite sure where they got the money, but they were able to make a down payment on it. So it was pretty tough. And then, of course, later on they went on to other businesses. But Shimpei...

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

KN: My dad did. And it was really funny. L.A. Times reporter -- you know, my dad's pretty humorous. And he didn't know what to say, they thought he misunderstood the question. They said, "Why didn't you become a U.S. citizen?" And you know what his answer was? "So I could talk to my grandson." You got to know one more piece of information. My son is a ham radio operator. He can get a ham radio operator license. He was laughing, he says, "They thought I was a dummy." He showed up in the L.A. Times, he had his hand up, he was on the front page. He got his hand up, you know, swearing in, he got the front page coverage.

KL: Do you know when that was?

KN: It had to be after 1975.

KL: Okay.

KN: He was right up there on the front page. And I think my grandfather Nishimura got his citizenship.

KL: Oh, really?

KN: He probably got it in his eighties, but he decided he's going to do it. He says, "I'm American," he says, "I've lived here so long."

KL: When did he die?

KN: He died probably twenty, twenty-five years ago.

KL: He saw a lot in his life.

KN: Yeah, he did. He was a tough guy. I mean, he was a good swimmer. We used to go to Huntington, he used to walk into the beach and disappear in the ocean and come ashore two hours later. He's a good swimmer. Guess what? My third son took after him. He's a good swimmer. Him and Grandpa would have loved going down to the beach and they would have never showed up. Because he's a surfer, too, right? Grandpa Nishimura probably never surfed.

KL: He could have taught him.

KN: So anyway...

KL: What about your folks? When did they die?

KN: My dad died just a few years ago. He died on the same day my first grandson was born. Different year. So my grandson is very comfortable with that, he says, "We made a handoff," he says. Which is a nice way of looking at it. And my mother died probably about the year 2000 or1999.

KL: And she never sought U.S. citizenship?

KN: I don't know, she remarried. So I didn't see her very often.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2015 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.