<Begin Segment 9>

RP: You talked about the Japanese American community in Fort Lupton and wanted to kind of expound on that. How tight was that community, and what institutions did they gather around? Your church...

GK: Oh, goodness, yes. It was, yes, I guess you would call it a tight community, because we, I think we had, when the gathering was big, it was huge. I mean, everybody would make lunches, they would have sushi and they'd make fried chicken and teriyaki chicken and whatever, and we would spread out and we would share. Everybody shared each other's food, but I think most of all, the time that I remember the most, the most fun was when we'd have, the services, Hanamatsuri, we didn't have a temple at the time, it was at the old Japanese school building. It was a two-story building, and it was really getting kind of rickety but we used to have a lot of things, and they would, we used to get dressed in kimonos and we'd do two or three dances, and the older fellows would do plays. And it would start in the morning and then we'd break for lunch, and we'd share lunches and then the program would start, maybe about two o'clock or so, and it would go on 'til probably six o'clock. And we got a lot of culture there because the stage was set so that it was almost, probably almost felt like we were in Japan because they would have these, you know, these big blocks that would, somebody would pull the curtain across, and they'd be, you know, so it's not like the silent curtains that parted, it was all done by hand. That was always exciting. Other times, they brought Japanese movies, and a lot of samurai movies. I didn't care too much for that, 'cause I used to go like this [covers eyes] and watch it. I didn't like all that sword fighting. But we would, somebody from Japan would bring those, and that was a big outing for us.

RP: As far as family outings, you said your folks liked to go to the mountains?

GK: Oh, yeah, my dad loved to go fishing, yes, so we used to, whenever, whenever they weren't really, really busy on the farm, we would go to the mountains and have a picnic near a brook, babbling brook, because my dad liked to put, we would buy a watermelon and he'd find a spot where it wouldn't get away, the stream wouldn't take the watermelon. We used to see watermelons going down the stream. [Laughs] But he always kind of wedged it so it wouldn't get away, and while we're eating and everything, then it would get cold. But he loved to go fishing, so we did, we did do a lot of picnics in the mountains. And then we used to do a lot of picnics in Denver also, at the city park.

RP: Was that with other Japanese families?

GK: With other Japanese families, yes. It could be a church picnic or whatever, but, and then my brothers used to play baseball, so we used to go to a lot of baseball games, too, yeah, and I think like Denver had their own team and Fort Lupton had their own team, and Greeley, so almost every Sunday, I think there was a game, so we'd go to the games and that always made our Sundays.

RP: Now, these teams were made up of strictly Japanese Americans?

GK: Japanese, uh-huh, Japanese. Yeah, Japanese fellows.

RP: Kind of like a semi-pro league?

GK: No...

RP: Not even that.

GK: No, I don't think so. I think they were pretty much just playing for fun, yeah. It just gave them an outlet and thank goodness my folks liked baseball.

RP: They really took to it.

GK: Oh, they really loved baseball. They had been, they were Yankee fans forever. [Laughs] They loved baseball, and even when my mother, at the age of a hundred and three, and she was still interested in baseball and football, she couldn't remember John Elway's name, but he was always number seven. He was always number seven, rooting for seven. So we were really interested in athletics.

RP: Sounds like you had a real bicultural upbringing.

GK: I guess so. I think because my brothers were probably, yeah, we really admired our brothers, I think we were brought up, and they were our role models, too. They probably read that thing about, "once a task is begun," you know. [Laughs]

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.