<Begin Segment 11>

RP: Principally, you were raised as Buddhist?

GK: Yes, we were raised as Buddhists, but my dad was very, he was strict, but he wanted us to have, have everything that all our friends had. So even though we were Buddhist, we celebrated Christmas and we hung stockings, and being in an old country home, we didn't have central heating or anything like that, so we had this old coal stove in the kitchen, and oil stove... I want to say oil stove, but I think it was also heated by coal. Anyway, there would be a wire that was stretched in the back of the stove, and usually in the winter we would, you know, we'd come in with wet mittens or whatever, but Christmas Eve, we always hung Dad's very long wool socks, and we'd pin it onto the, onto the wire, and in the morning we usually found an orange, some walnuts, a quarter, I think that was about it. But we were -- never coal. [Laughs] Or lemon, so I guess it was okay. But yeah, but we always had a Christmas tree, and he always decorated that and always had those, what I call antiques now, those little birds that you pinched on there, and I have one from my, from the tree, I own one, and then also the bubble lights that are coming back. So we always felt like we were, we were, we had everything that the others had. I think he made sure that we felt like we were like everybody else.

RP: Not being out left out.

GK: Nothing left out, yeah.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.