<Begin Segment 27>

RP: Have you returned to Minidoka in the years since your confinement there?

SK: Would I go back there?

RP: Have you been back?

SK: Oh, no. I haven't been back. My wife says she doesn't want to go back. So I said, "Okay, we won't go then."

RP: But you attended all the reunions?

SK: Yeah. Met all the people. And I think, you know, like, you always when you were younger, you think, visualize a place as it was, and you're very disappointed when you see the place. And I don't want to be disappointed. You know, see, it's just a little thing now, there's a stone thing that used to be the gate. The other part is not there. And it's all land now, I mean, farmland, or sagebrush. And it still was home for a few years, and I hate to see it the way it is now. Like so, when you said you could build a memorial there, I think, why would you want a memorial there? Because nobody goes by. I remember my son saying, "We went by there. We wanted to find the place, and we couldn't find it." He said, "It's off a beaten track." I said, "Well, it was." They didn't want it near communities, nobody wanted us. Why would be on the highway or a freeway, or whatever it is? And he said, "Well, that's true, too." But I also wonder why they have to make a nice memorial someplace where nobody in the world will see it, and the next generation will look at it and say, what kind of wording would you put on a memorial like that? I would be more interested what you would put in the verbally, not verbally, but written words. How the government fouled up and did all this to innocent people. Or what would you say? Or that brave people lived here? How did they survive here? And why would they come here? Some story. And how many people would go by it? A desolate place like that. As soon as I got that message, that form, I thought, can I write all this kind of stuff? Would I be doing right, when somebody wants it there? And I question myself, many a nights, to think, gee, what would I say if I said "yes." And what would I want to put on there? Have you people decided what you're gonna put on the memorial?

RP: On the memorial at Minidoka?

SK: Yeah, on the memorial thing, or whatever you, has there been some kind of an input into it?

RP: I think there has been. I'm not sure what has happened.

SK: Oh. But it hasn't happened yet, so...

RP: No. It is, it is administered by the Park Service. And there's plans to enlarge the site. I think they acquired additional acreage.

SK: Yeah, because then Salt Lake, I guess they had a big hullabaloo about...

RP: There were a number of meetings about general management, how to manage the site, how to develop the site.

SK: Right.

RP: I've heard plans of building a whole block of barracks back. Maybe it'll be Block 7.

SK: Oh.

RP: I mean five, sorry.

SK: Oh, they're gonna have something there.

RP: Yeah.

KP: Interpretive site, right?

RP: Right. Yeah, eventually they'll have a small interpretive center, a visitor center there at Minidoka. I think that will help draw more people.

SK: Yeah, because if you didn't have anything there, why would you go there? So I was wondering what...

RP: I'd say that most of the people that go there are probably former internees and other families.

KP: But there's a lot of people that we have at Manzanar who, you know, Caucasian people, that have become very interested in the story. And they travel around the country looking for these places, and wanting to know more about it. Because they had friends. I mean, a lot of people your age and younger had, you know, they were in those classrooms that were emptied. And all their friends were gone. And they want to know what happened. 'Cause they never really knew the story.

SK: Yeah, there are the younger people, of course. My age group was mostly can't remember anything anyway. [Laughs] Unless they wrote it down. Because it's very difficult to remember a thing, unless it happened to you. Even what happened to me, I try to remember, gee, what year was it that I did this? What year was it then, back in the '40s. It's kind of difficult to remember. It's hard enough to remember what I ate last night. You know, and then would I be able to, she says, "Why would you want to be interviewed, when you can't remember?" I said, "Well, it'll come back." As you talk, it kind of flows.

RP: It does. I mean, you went through a lot of experiences in a very short time. Puyallup, Minidoka, college, MIS, back to Minidoka. You were...

SK: And then when you're gonna die.

RP: And you go to Japan. You go to Japan.

SK: Yeah, of all things, you know.

RP: You never thought you'd end up in Japan.

SK: No. In the widest world, you know.

RP: Did you ever visit Japan on your own, too?

SK: Yeah, we went about twice now. We went on a tour once, then my wife and I went all by ourselves when I retired in '86. And we went to see my father's birthplace, you know the big land. And he was telling me, my cousin was telling me, "Oh, we all know that the Coca-colas on our land. He's leasing it." Oh, and you didn't give me a nickel off that, did ya? [Laughs] Oh boy, he's got rice fields all over the place and he's a patent lawyer, too, in another town. And he's not, his wife doesn't, his wife and his daughter used to raise rice and sell it. And that was the big deal. And the wife said, "Yes, we worked hard." But he didn't work hard. [Laughs]

<End Segment 27> - Copyright © 2007 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.