<Begin Segment 11>

RP: So who were your best friends in camp?

KK: Well, my best friend was a girl named Cherri Iwai and her name was Nobuko but the whole group of girls, I think I was probably one of the younger ones, but everybody got a fruit name and I was Peaches and she was Cherry and Cherri has become her name, I mean, it stuck with her. And I believe she just altered the spelling a little, she uses an I at the end rather than the Y.

RP: Do you still keep in touch with her?

KK: Just during Christmas but last Christmas I didn't send anything out so... and her birthday was on Armistice Day so I've known about Armistice Day from an early age, her birthday was November 11th.

RP: Did you have any other nicknames besides Peaches?

KK: No, it was mainly Kaoru, I went by Kaoru, until I left camp. But the boys used to tease and call me "coyote" and "cow doo" and all of that sort of thing because it is very difficult to pronounce, you know, with the rolled R and vowels.

RP: Yeah, it's very convenient to change it. What was your, I mean, how did being at Manzanar, did it change your personality at all from what it was before camp?

KK: I don't think so. I was kind of shy I believe, more introverted. I had other friends, I mean, I did have friends but most of the girls lived... came from other blocks so, you know, we didn't (play together after school). Like I mentioned over the phone that my friend Ruth who was in the fourth grade class, left to go to Seabrook Farms in New Jersey but we get together here now. I mean, as adults we became reacquainted and found that we have a number of things in common. I just saw her last Saturday, we go to this talk cinema in Palo Alto to see unreleased movies. Oh, that's another thing I remember from camp, was movies where we took our blankets and kind of dug little holes in the sand and watched the movies, Deanna Durbin and Donald O'Connor movies, musicals and that sort of thing. But we went without our parents, we went with friends, you know, that was at eight and nine years old, as nine year olds.

RP: Did you ever get lost on your, you know, during a dark evening trying to find your way back to the barrack room?

KK: (We generally stayed together with playmates coming home from movies.) No, after dark, I think most of the time, you know, I was supposed to be at home. But during the day we did go to other mess halls to have lunch and things with friends, not often but we did that. And we had old family friends from Culver City and I used to walk clear across from 31 to Block 18, is that quite a ways? I used to walk that to visit her but they both went to Tule Lake and then it must have been, it was a cold winter and she was a very tiny delicate lady and she passed away. But there were other people that I knew along the way and I visited but I was allowed to do that, I did it on my own, walking across. I remember getting sick at school and having to walk home from Block 16 and crossing several firebreaks to get home.

RP: One other thing you mentioned that you did before camp was roller skate.

KK: (Yes. It was much easier on the sidewalks.) We tried, we tried. [Laughs] I had roller skates (in camp) but it got stuck in the tar, you know, especially in the summer time, the tar on the roads would stick to our (skates), so we would try skating in the laundry rooms but the ladies would chase us out. [Laughs]

RP: So there never was a really decent place to skate?

KK: No, but I did have a pair of roller skates in camp. I don't know whether... I don't believe I took them, I must have gotten it as a gift or something.

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