<Begin Segment 2>

RP: I'd like to get a little better understanding of your father and his experiences in America. Maybe you can give for us, we can start by getting to know his name.

CH: My father's name was Frank Kinichi Hirabara. And he came to this country, he was fourteen years old. He was left in Japan with his aunt all this time while my grandfather and grandmother, they were here in this country. Originally, they kind of stepped into Hawaii first, and then they came to Florin.

RP: Your grandparents?

CH: Yes.

RP: Do you have a general idea of when they would have come to Florin?

CH: I had it, let's see. My uncle was born in 1904, so prior to that time, I suppose.

RP: So they left your, your father there.

CH: Yes. So my father often thought about his aunt more than his mother. [Laughs] Because she wasn't, she was never around.

RP: So he may have been left with his aunt at a very young age?

CH: Yes.

RP: So he didn't really know his parents.

CH: No.

RP: Where in Japan was your father from?

CH: Well, my grandfather was from the island off of Yamaguchi-ken, it's called Oshima-gun. Gun might be... I don't know, what is it? County or something. And I have a whole lot of names, but I don't know if it's on the mainland or on this little island, so that's about as far as I can get.

RP: Do you know much about his family life in Japan, farmers, merchants?

CH: Oh, well, my grandfather, he told us that he was, what do you call those, people that harvest salt from the ocean. What do they call that? I don't know. [Laughs] And he didn't have any, anybody with him except his sister, that was it. They had some kind of epidemic, I think. I don't know what it was, but everybody passed on.

RP: So your father came over to America to join his parents eventually?

CH: Yes, uh-huh, yeah. And he went to a grammar school in Florin, the segregated school. And that's where he decided that we should not go to a segregated school. And so we were, we asked our neighbor, Mr. Davies, who was a trustee of the Elder Creek school district, and he said it was okay for us to go there. This was mainly a Caucasian...

RP: Grammar school.

CH: ...attendance.

RP: And how far away was the school relative to the segregated school?

CH: Oh, it was a little further than Florin school. I'm sure it was about a mile down the road, and we walked every day.

RP: So your father attended the segregated school for all his grammar school time?

CH: He only had to go to... he went about two years, because he had math and all that, but the English part, you know, he had to try to get, get hold of that.

RP: So he did have a semblance of an educational background.

CH: Pardon?

RP: He did have some educational background in Japan and then completed it when he came here?

CH: Oh, yes.

RP: And was he able to kind of get a good grasp of English?

CH: I think so, yes.

RP: And he had a value about kids should, of all groups, should be together.

CH: That's right, yes.

RP: And so you didn't have to go through that experience.

CH: Yes.

RP: Very powerful. And did your grandparents on your father's side, did they stay in America the rest of their lives? They never went back to the camp?

CH: No. My uncles were born here, so there's roots here. And they don't have anyone in Japan, actually, to go to.

RP: So your family is, is here in America.

CH: Yeah. There's no doubt about it. They just don't leave.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.