Densho Digital Archive - Karlene Koketsu Interview (denshovh-kkarlene-01-0016)

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RP: So how did it feel to be out of camp? Did you have any feelings about that at all?

KK: It was nice, it was nice. I don't remember too clearly my feelings about it, I mean we were just in a different place. Well, we had snow in camp but just probably one winter while we were there, I'm not positive. I don't believe we had as much snow after the first winter. It was a totally different, you know, environment.

RP: How did you travel to Utah?

KK: By train, we went to Utah on a train and I'm not sure, maybe Mr. Kimura came to get us in Salt Lake City. I don't remember exactly. We did go to church briefly and the minister's wife was a piano teacher so I think I took piano briefly, I mean, we were just there for six months before coming back to L.A. So I went to three different schools in the sixth grade, in Utah, in downtown L.A. and then back to Nora Sterry School.

RP: And how was it for your parents in the resettling process back in Los Angeles?

KK: It was difficult. Do you remember the little house I told you that was behind the market when I was first, I mean, a toddler? We lived there briefly and we brought our Japanese tub, you know, ofuro, that we had in Utah and my father hooked it up. Although we had a faucet in L.A., but in Utah my father filled it with a hose I think and then lit a fire underneath it.

RP: Can you describe the tub?

KK: It was a metal, galvanized metal, with a wooden platform that you had to stand on because it was hot underneath.

RP: How many could bathe in it at once?

KK: Oh, I suppose several but we, you know, I think maybe my sister and I went in together and my mother took my brother, he was... maybe my dad took my brother by that time he was five. Oh, we also had, in Utah we had a root cellar, you know, so we used to slide down the root cellar in the winter, that winter. Oh, we had a cat, that was one nice thing about being out of camp, we were able to have the pet, we had a cat. But we had to leave her because, you know, there's a quarantine period when you take pets (to a different state). We didn't know where we would be living so we weren't able to take her. We also had a pet pig, it was just a tiny little, what are small pigs called? Piglets, I don't know. [Laughs] But they said he grew to be 450 pounds when they butchered him.

RP: Were your parents able to obtain work fairly soon after they came to Los Angeles?

KK: You know, I don't remember what my dad did. I don't remember that period, it wasn't very long, maybe a couple months, several months because I went to school there and then we came back and I finished sixth grade in West L.A. and then my dad went back to gardening. I think that period was difficult, the resettlement period. Oh, we lived in the gakuen, that's right, when we first moved back to West L.A. we lived in the gakuen and then we moved into that little house before my parents bought a home. But it took a while to, you know, to save enough money to buy a home.

RP: The gakuen was set up as a hostel for returning families?

KK: Right. We were in the school building, in the back they had a gymnasium that they had partitioned off with blankets but we were in an actual room with a water fountain. [Laughs] You know, the time periods I'm not exactly sure but I had my twelfth birthday in that little house before my parents bought their house.