<Begin Segment 6>

RP: Where did you attend elementary school?

IK: That was, elementary school was in... near Western and Slossen. It was somewhere in there, and then ended up at Highland Park in the fourth grade. Then I left there -- that's where I met Sammy Lee at the time, and we were very good friends at that time, and for some reason suddenly we were enemies. And it... much, much later Sammy wrote a letter apologizing to me for such of his actions, but his father had brainwashed him, being Korean and Japan had overtaken Korea back then some time. And Sammy Lee took, stood up for his father. But I admired Sammy, he wrote me a letter and apologized much, much, much later.

RP: You were, you were very involved in sports, particularly swimming.

IK: Yes.

RP: Were there other elements of popular culture that kind of pulled you in, like you mentioned music, movies, other...

IK: I, for one spell, very concentrated bunch of time... the fellow, the leader of the Woodcraft Rangers took interest in me and got me interested in shooting bows and arrows, of which evidently I became pretty good. He took me around exhibiting archery on stage at schools, and I didn't know anything about it. He wanted me to shoot, so I went to shoot. And the target got so where the arrows would go through the target and bounce all over the stage, rear of the stage. Background, you'd see 'em hitting the walls. Got a little scary, didn't know where they were going. But that... I won some golden arrows or whatever they were and I don't know where any of them are, but he took me, he spent a lot of time developing my shooting and got into making bows and arrows and stuff like that, so that was quite concentrated for a while. And I was still a, must've been somewhere in the low teens. That's about all I remember.

RP: Did your, did your family have an opportunity to travel at all, outside of Los Angeles?

IK: My father loved to travel, but the only traveling we did is, I can remember, is after my mother passed away. But he would drive for nine hundred miles in a day, and this was early days when there were no freeways, and we would just bounce around for the longest time.

RP: Just to, just...

IK: Just to drive. And he loved the desert, and he still did 'til the day he died.

RP: Do you remember some of the places you went?

IK: What I remember were like Lake Tahoe and, I believe it was the furthest away that I know, but he had driven to the, when the Alaskan Highway first opened... I said I thought he was crazy. That was a gravel road all the way up, and in his new Cadillac he did that.

RP: Did, you mentioned a trip to Tahoe, did you drive up into the Owens Valley, any occasions...

IK: I think we made a loop from, and there was not much in between here, or Los Angeles and Tahoe. I just remember that single road going... I believe, I heard, remember going up and coming down, and we had a Buick with no windows on it. We put up those Eisenglass or whatever it was, and that was, closed it up, but of course, it was a Buick and it barely made the grade of course.

RP: So you actually visited the Eastern Sierra before you came to Manzanar.

IK: Yes. Oh, in fact, we went further to Yellowstone, which was quite a bit further. And it was a boring time looking at a long, long, long highway. Well, he loved it.

RP: It sounds like your father was fairly successful with his...

IK: I think he was. I think he did one hell of a job brcause I was coming to SC with a dictionary and I don't know how you'd pass, pass the classes, 'cause I couldn't do anything. So I admire him for that, and all of the Isseis that had the guts to come over here without the language.

RP: How comfortable were you with your Japanese?

IK: Oh, in camp?

RP: Before camp.

IK: Before camp I was not that well-acquainted with the Japanese kids, until we moved to East L.A. Then I was invited into a Japanese club, which was a social club. And I kinda had learned to see what they were all about, 'cause they were a little bit different, or I was a little bit different than they, obviously. 'Cause it was kind of tough getting into their society. Not that I was proud or they were proud or whatever. It was just that we had different kid times. And I had all Caucasian or other than Japanese kid times to know how they fought and played. I had to learn that stuff all over in East L.A.

RP: Where did your, your artistic background begin?

IK: It started... I can remember me on the living room floor copying cartoons. And I did that for a very long time, and that was the only incentive, or... I don't know. It had to be that 'cause I was getting pretty good at doing cartoons, but serious art, I had no idea about that. But I did know much later that, well, I was interested in that and I still am, and so I, that little bug stayed in my head. Oh, I guess it really happened when my father arrived at a time when he said, about my studies and about becoming doctor, etcetera, and that's when it, being an artist came to mind. And after trying I told my pop, "Hey, I'm too dumb," so we made a deal. "I'll take a science major, and if I flunk you got, I'm done." And he agreed, so I just recall at college I could speak college English fluently, no problem. And then the, in the final of the term I sat down in a two hour test time and I finished it in fifteen minutes. I answered everything, and I felt I spoke quite fluently of school German, but I flunked. There you are, Pop. I didn't care if I flunked 'cause the fact that I could speak school German quite well and I flunked, I said something's wrong. And that's all I could figure, 'cause I felt I proved to myself that I wasn't that dumb because I knew I spoke German. So that turned the point and he sent me, allowed me to go to art school, and there I was so interested that I knew I could do it.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.