<Begin Segment 7>

RP: Let's talk about high school, just for a little while. Where did you go to high school?

IK: First went to high school in Franklin High in Highland Park and then we transferred over to, in my senior year, to Roosevelt High, which was East L.A. and that's where I cultivated a lot of the other side of people, I guess. They had much better understanding, and I became more open to the welcoming I received among the Italians and the Spanish and the Jews and the Russians. I was accepted there. That was, I think the learning time.

RP: Where you also discovering girls at that time, too?

IK: Sort of, but not... I looked at 'em, but that's about as far as it went 'cause I wouldn't know what to do. Anyway, then I became my first, you might call it puppy love. There was a girl that... first, first date I ever had, and I didn't know what to do, so I finally learned some.

RP: You, you lived in Los Angeles area for much of your, for all your years.

IK: All my life until then.

RP: Do you remember trips to Little Tokyo, or just, maybe you can describe for us what that community was like before the war.

IK: Well, I didn't go to Japan 'til after the war, so...

RP: Oh, I meant Little Tokyo in Los Angeles.

IK: It was, it was acceptable. I didn't think anything deep about it. I just remember how they squatted in the streets and smoked their cigarettes. That I couldn't do. They were just too limber, but they could just squat anywhere and just sit, sit like that for hours and hours and hours. That was the only thing strange I saw about them. Very flexible.

RP: Did your father send any of, he never sent you back to Japan before the war, did he?

IK: No, that, one time... oh, I recall, I don't remember how old I was, but he asked me something about dual citizenship and if I recall correctly he, we had to make a choice of one or the other. I said, "Well, heck, I'm an American. I can't speak Japanese. My mother's... when she was alive, but I know, I know English. I'm American." And that was just the, that made the decision for my pop, or he accepted that. And that was, that's all that was ever said.

RP: There were quite a few, there were quite a few Issei parents that sent kids back to Japan.

IK: I don't really know. I don't know any -- oh, out of camp some people, I found out, did go back, but they came back here, so that says somethin'. 'Cause they got worked on over in Japan. They were not accepted there, so I think that's why they came back, because they knew they were Americans.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.