<Begin Segment 16>

AL: Did you have any incidence of discrimination when you returned to the island?

SK: Two things. When I got back to the island, a lot of the kids were, belonged to the Rainbow Girls. And that was, that was the thing to belong to. Okay, and then the other thing was joining the Girl Scouts. 'Cause I was in the scouting program before the war. And so I went up to the lady who ran the scouting program and I said, "Can I get back into the scouting program?" And she said, "Well, the kids are too far advanced now so I don't think that you would fit in." And I says, "Okay." I mean, I accepted it. I was disappointed, very disappointed, but I said, "Okay. I understand that." And then, but it wasn't too long after that I found out that anybody can go join the Girl Scouts at any time.

AL: Did you join? Did you ever get to...

SK: I never did join.

AL: Did any Japanese Americans join the Girl Scouts?

SK: Not at that time, no. And then the Rainbow Girls, that was a Masonic group, and that was a big group that the kids were all into and, and of course you want to be a part of a group. And I remember Remo, my classmate, said, "Well, let me see what I can do." You know, so she, so she had her mother call headquarters. And they said no, Japanese are not accepted. And that's when I practically broke down and cried, 'cause I couldn't get into anything. That was, that really hurt, I think.

AL: And what, what age are you by that... you would be about...

SK: I was...

AL: Fourteen?

SK: Let's see. I was about twelve, thirteen. Something like that. That's a rough time for a teenager.

AL: Were you involved in school activities back on the island?

SK: I always felt I was kind of behind in, in school because Bainbridge had a good school curriculum and the kids were doing, you know, they were very well advanced. And of course coming from Manzanar and from Chicago, it was a totally different story and I was way behind. And I don't think I was... I think I was able to keep up, you know, in most things, but when I came back to Bainbridge I was totally lost. And one of the neat things that happened was a, one of my eighth grade teachers recognized the fact that I was having problems and she offered to help me. Like I say, the Bainbridge people were really good people.

AL: How did your parents adjust to going back to the island? How was life different after the war for them?

SK: They didn't have many problems. They just went back to farming. And we generally, my parents generally kept to themselves other than among the Japanese community. And my dad was, and my dad started raising strawberries, and then we'd send them to, we didn't have too many acres of strawberries and so it was just enough to keep him busy and to keep him with a little bit of extra money. And so, you know, like I say, he did enjoy that. And I, and I used to help, we used to help take the berries to the cannery, etcetera.

AL: Okay. Did... do we have two or three minutes? Okay. We're just about out of tape. I guess a couple... one question I wanted to ask is, in thinking forward of people seeing this interview in years to come, people learning from it, what is the most important thing that you want people to know about this whole experience? That you think people need to know.

SK: I think they need to know what happened. And I think most people recognize the fact that this can't happen again. Because something came up, probably about ten years ago, and I remember they were saying they were gonna ship these people off someplace. And I, and they said no, you know, they put a big stop to that.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.