<Begin Segment 5>

RP: Did, did you, during your childhood attend Japanese language school at all?

IK: Did while my mother was alive and when we lived in the west, southwest area by the church, and I remember a few words and... I stopped using Japanese when my mother died. My father always spoke English at home, so that's all I remember in Japanese school is when I had to go from grammar school to walk across an area to the church where the Japanese school was. I had to have little fights to get through the district, which didn't sit too well with my father, I guess. But he didn't help me any.

RP: Your ethnicity was Japanese, your culture was American. Did your parents emphasize one over the other, or did you grow up in sort of a bicultural atmosphere?

IK: No, I was... no, my father talked about pride and etcetera of the Japanese culture, which I heard him well, I thought. But I did appreciate all of the other guys that had their own ways of life, and I think that's what helped me a great deal.

RP: Any other values that they tried to instill in you that...

IK: No, I think my father had the biggest impression there, that, 'cause I knew the others that fed me enchiladas that were the best in the world and the Jewish... the heck did they have it? I ate a lot with friends of...

RP: Matzo balls, potato latkes?

IK: Yeah, that stuff. So I was, I was well cultured, or taught about, about menus, and I could eat anything, but I only ate the favorites.

RP: [Laughs] So you really experienced some of these other cultures?

IK: Definitely, definitely.

RP: Their food and holidays and things like that?

IK: Yes, and my neighbor played a squeeze box.

RP: Accordion.

IK: Accordion, yeah. So we got, went to many different parties, just because he played the accordion, and so for some reason I went along with him. And so there was Greek parties and Mexican parties and Italian parties, and everybody sang and we all sang Spanish songs and stuff like that. It was fun. But they were people, as I say.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.