Densho Digital Archive - Frank Isamu Kikuchi Interview (denshovh-kfrank

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JA: What... tell me about the experience of learning you had to go to camp. When did you first learn that and what was the family reaction?

FK: Oh, there was a lot of news in the media where... and also the Japanese local newspapers that kept us apprised of what we had to do, and also our church, Maryknoll, was very concerned because Maryknoll is a Mission Catholic church, and their group consisted entirely of Japanese. They, they were probably the best source of news. Father Leavy, who was the pastor there, was very concerned and he saw to it that we were all aware of what was going to happen, what would happen, and gave us good direction on what we should do and what we shouldn't do, and things of that order. And he tried to communicate with the government to help us out, too.

JA: How much advance notice did you have for having to go off to camp?

FK: I think it was about three weeks, yeah. And at that time, at Maryknoll, we used to have sort of an information-gathering place where we would disseminate news, and I had a little bit notice where if we signed up at a certain place, we would be able to go directly to Manzanar because Manzanar had been changed from a, what they called an assembly center or a jail to a permanent concentration camp. And if we went directly there, we wouldn't have to move two times. Because anybody that went to Santa Anita, that jail, the holding place there, would have to be moved again, you know. And to avoid that, there was a chance if we went to Manzanar we could just make one move, and I elected to do that and I told the family about it and we went on that basis.

JA: What were you able to take with you?

FK: Whatever you can carry, so we acquired cheap cardboard-type suitcases and I think it amounted to something like the two biggest ones we could carry, each person, that's it.

JA: How did you decide what it was you were going to leave behind?

FK: Oh, it was a matter of clothing. My mother didn't tell us anything, she left it up to us individually. So in my case it was clothing mostly and a few other odds and ends. And we even went out, each, all of us, I think, went out to buy a few bits of clothing because we had news that Manzanar, oh, you had to wear boots and the sun was fierce, and you know. We, I remember I did buy what they call engineer boots because I didn't have boots of any kind. I bought some engineer boots. I bought a heavy coat, army surplus, and things of that order.

JA: What did you do with the items you had to leave behind?

FK: Oh, burned 'em. I remember we had -- in those days we had incinerators, you know, as part of living in the city and cities where you can have incinerators, and we burned a lot of things, and at the store we burned a lot of things, too. I remember we burned, I had some cameras and stuff, we burned those all.

JA: You didn't try to sell them?

FK: No, because we knew that nobody would give you much for anything because they knew we had to evacuate and we were, we were offered peanuts for everything, you know. There were a lot of stories going around about that kind of thing and it sort of discouraged you from even trying to, attempt to sell anything. Because I had friends of mine that were in that group that was, that had to leave Terminal Island, and those people had only forty-eight hours and they put their things on their lawn, and they were offered things, amounts like five dollars for a brand-new refrigerator or twenty dollars for all their living room furniture. It was ridiculous the prices they were offered.

JA: What about your father's business?

FK: That, I used to have a half-, I had a half-brother who has passed away, and he had knowledge of this group that's still existing called Certified Grocers, it's a wholesale grocery company, and he arranged that we could take inventory and they would buy our groceries at their price minus a discount, you know, because it'd be all broken lots. And we took inventory ourselves and they checked it and then they accepted our totals and then they paid my father some money.

JA: So he got a fair price?

FK: Not a fair price, no, but because it's figured at the wholesale price, Certified Grocers has huge buying power so their wholesale price is lower than what my dad used to buy it at. Plus, besides that, it's a broken lot, so for that you have to... you know, like you might have three short of a case, well, it's a broken lot, you pay... I mean they'll offer you less then, because it's a lot of trouble for them to restock it then. Then, on top of that there was a discount for all the handling, so it was not that much. And besides, there still was the, all the equipment, you know, all the refrigerators and all that, you didn't get peanuts for that either.

JA: What kind of emotional feelings did you have or your family have about having to make this move?

FK: Well, I was too darn dumb to know. It seemed like almost an adventure. But then there was a big sadness in losing your possessions, like I had use of the car, what we called the family car, it was my own, mine to use as my own because we also had a pickup truck, and gee, once that was gone, I felt like I didn't have any legs anymore. We sold that for just a couple of hundred bucks, I remember. It was a two-year-old four-door sedan, sold it for a couple of hundred bucks.