<Begin Segment 11>

KP: Can I interject a question here real quick? You know, you landed in Bainbridge, or, Block 3. So you were like the earliest people in the camp and you watched the camp fill up, the different groups come in. What was that like? What... did you look forward to each bus coming in? Did you want to try to, I mean...

SK: I thought, oh, gee there's, you know, there was a lot of kids and I thought gee, that's nice. I just thought this was great that I, we'd be among a lot of kids. And I did get to know a few kids 'cause we went to school with them. And they were from all over. Some were from L.A., some were from Terminal Island. But I was, I tended to shy away from anyone who got aggressive. You know, I mean, into fighting things, I decided that's, that wasn't for me. We as kids in our own block, we used to fight all the time over little things. But with the Terminal Island, with anybody else we just decided that we didn't want to get in, I didn't want to get into that.

AL: Did you make any friends in camp that are still friends?

SK: Yes. One of Kay Nakao's niece moved into our block. And she was just about a year or two older than me, but because there were only a few kids in our block after the Bainbridge people left, Eileen and I became good friends. And there were two other girls there.

AL: So why didn't your family go to Minidoka with the rest of the Bainbridge people?

SK: My dad was, my dad was the kind that didn't like to move around. But he was sent to, he was sent to Seattle because he was taken by the FBI, and then he was sent to Montana. And he came back and then he says, everybody said, well, we should all move to Idaho. And my dad says, "Forget it." He says, "I'm tired of moving." And that was his one reason he didn't want to move. And he wasn't the kind of person to be traipsing around either.

AL: And which other families stayed behind with... I mean, there were several Bainbridge families that didn't move. Is that correct?

SK: Yes.

AL: Do you remember what the, who the families were?

SK: Okay, the Nakatas, the Hayashis, the Furukawas, and us, and one other family. I can't remember. Anyway, there were five families that stayed behind. And so of course the Nakatas were, they were a big family and they were, today they're, they run a lot of grocery stores around Puget Sound. But they were... so we got to be very good friends with them. Of course, they were one of our neighbors.

AL: Do you know why they stayed behind?

SK: I don't know why anybody else stayed behind. But my dad was, my dad was the only one that said, "I quit. I don't like moving."

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