<Begin Segment 8>

AL: What do you, what do you remember about how you spent your early time at Manzanar? Before there was a school or anything, what did you do during the day?

SK: Oh, we used to go out to play and then I thought, "Gee, this nice." I saw my neighbors across the way and we'd get out there and play. And then they tried to start a school for us but we went in as a group of kids into one of the buildings, and I'm not quite sure what they tried to teach us. But it took them a few months to really get things organized and I had a... I had a fifth grade -- I don't remember too much about my fourth grade -- but I remember when I went into fifth grade I had the, I had a fifth grade teacher who was, wasn't very nice. She would just come in and just yell at us. And then the superintendent would come into the classroom and she and the superintendent would walk out and they would be talking and pretty soon, my teacher came back in, in tears. And I think, I don't know what the problem was but I presume it was because of the way she was teaching us, working with us. But...

AL: Do you know what her name was?

SK: No. I don't. I did remember once upon a time. But then after that I had some very good teachers. I had an eighth grade teacher who was a, a very attractive teacher, and she was, she knew English very well, you know, and so she really went into the business of teaching us English. And the teacher who was next door to her was a Spanish teacher. And of course being in the, I think it was in the seventh grade, seventh or eighth grade, we used to just tease the heck out of both those teachers, thinking, you know... oh, about different things and we thought that those two would eventually get together. Well, they never did. But they, the kids just, they just ran, did all kinds of things and they would write things on the blackboard while the teachers were out, you know. And I decided I'd better stay out of that. [Laughs] I didn't want to get, I didn't want to get into trouble at home.

AL: What did your mother do in camp before your father got there?

SK: She stayed home and then eventually she went to work at the mess halls working in the kitchen. And then when my dad came back to camp, he needed something to do 'cause he couldn't just stand doing nothing. So he went and worked on the farms there where they produced fruits and vegetables for the camp. And he loved that.

AL: What do you remember about the day he returned? Or when you found out that he was returning and then when he actually returned?

SK: We were, we met him down I think in Block 2 where the bus came in. And he and Mr. Kojima were the ones that came back together. Mr. Kojima was another islander. And it was, it was very nice to have my dad back but that's all I can remember about it.

AL: Was he the same man that had left Bainbridge Island?

SK: I think so. 'Cause he, well first of all he was hard of hearing so he wasn't the kind of person to get into a lot of conversation or a lot of things with people.

AL: Did your brother work in camp?

SK: Yes, he did. And he was, he was... on Bainbridge Island before he went to camp, he got interested in radio. He just loved monkeying with all those things. And he had so much fun with that and then when my dad was taken, of course, the FBI had looked over everything that he had there because they thought, "Oh gosh, he might be sending messages, etcetera...." But he had never done that, he enjoyed just having fun with it. Well, right after my dad was taken, it was a very traumatic thing for him and I remember one of my sisters told me that he went out and took all of his radio equipment, whatever he had, and he just threw it out on the, in the ditches because he felt that that's what was the reason why my dad was taken. But I don't think that was the case.

AL: Do you remember anything in particular about the dynamic between he and your dad when your dad got back? I mean, were they, were they close? Had their relationship changed?

SK: They were, they were always, we were always very close. We were a very close family. So there was no biggie. It was, I think it was, it was hard for my dad to come back into the community. But he may... I don't remember too much about it.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.