<Begin Segment 4>

RP: What are, what are some of your earliest memories? You grew up on the farm.

SK: Yes.

RP: With, with your older sisters, early on.

SK: Uh-huh. (Younger sisters...)

RP: You mentioned that your father raised a lot of strawberries.

SK: [Laughs] To this day I don't eat strawberries because I had to pick 'em. And if there's any back-breaking work, that's it. Yeah. But, uh, your question was...

RP: Tell us a little bit about what you can recall about the farm.

SK: During the summers we worked pretty hard. We were picking berries, all kinds of berries my father had. But during the rest of the year I know I tried to get out of whatever work, I should have been doing, by telling my parents I had homework. And that was number one. The priority for them was that we do our homework and do well in school. So, I did a lot of getting out of farm work.

Off Camera: Can I say something? Annie and Ira used to say that was she was out in the field, she would have a book open in the field. I don't know how true that was, but that she was so into her studies. That's what they used to tell me.

SK: [Laughs] Well, that might have been an act. I don't remember.

Off Camera: Why aren't you more like Sachi and do your homework. Maybe it was a book about strawberry growing? No?

SK: Did I write a book about strawberries?

RP: Was it? I was saying you were reading a book about strawberry growing. No?

SK: No.

RP: Okay. What, what other, you mentioned education was important in the family. Were there other values that were, tried to be instilled in you from your parents, or things that they taught...

SK: Well I remember my mother telling us over and over again, "You've got to be much better than your white friend if you want to be respected. You have to be on your best behavior all the time." So I think that most of us Nisei anyway were brought up with that feeling that we had to give a hundred percent, you know. Other values I guess would be loyalty and honesty. Is that what you mean?

RP: You said that you attended a Japanese school for a while?

SK: Yes. I hated it. [Laughs] We (attended), because we were forced to. We'd go five days a week to regular school and on Saturdays we went to Japanese school. And I wish I had taken it seriously but my friends and I would bring along comic books and read them when we were supposed to be doing some work in Japanese. And the teacher would come around and hit us with the ruler if he found out what we were doing. Anyway, I regret that I didn't learn more Japanese when I was in school. But, as I said, our parents forced us to go. They were hoping that we would learn something.

RP: So you could communicate a little better?

SK: Yes. Yes. Didn't happen. [Laughs]

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.