<Begin Segment 11>

RP: Tell us why you ended up in Hawaii, Dorothy?

DK: Oh, my folks decided that... my, my other sister went. She was married to a 100th Battalion person and...

RP: Would that have been Mary?

DK: No, Aki.

RP: Aki.

DK: Uh-huh, yeah.

RP: Okay.

DK: And, she was living in Hawaii. So my folks decided that they would, they wanted to try it over there. 'Cause they didn't care for New York. So I went with them, thinking that I was gonna help them adjust. But they didn't like it there. And then I met my husband over there, so I stayed. And I raised my son, well, I didn't raise him over there, but until he was about five then we came back here. But I met my husband in Hawaii.

RP: Uh-huh. And was he Japanese American?

DK: Uh-huh. Yeah.

RP: He had a camp experience or...

DK: No.

RP: He lived in Hawaii.

DK: He lived in Hawaii. So, they weren't, they didn't know anything about camps, hardly. They, they knew that we had been put in camps, but they didn't realize what kind of life we had in camp. They, it seems so funny because they were so much closer to Japan than we were and yet they were just running around free. And we were in camp. But that, that's how I got there.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.