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RP: How about your mother, what can you tell us about her?

KK: My mother was born in Heinz, California and she told that was buried by the freeways, but it was in the Huntington Beach area. What was the... I can't remember the name of that area anymore. So she grew up and graduated from Huntington Beach High School in... I've forgotten, probably I've told you dates before that I can't remember now. She grew up... her father was a farmer also and she remembers Mr. Knotts, you know, of the Knotts Berry family, he used to have a trundle cart and sell boysenberries she said and she remembers that as a child. And she had a happy childhood but her mother died in childbirth in 1920 and then her father died about four years later. I didn't mention that she was born in November of 1912. She lived to be eighty... eighty-eight I believe, she was almost eighty-nine, she died in June of 2005. And my father died in February of '65, (1995), he was ninety-one.

RP: So how much age disparity was there between them?

KK: Eight years.

RP: Eight years?

KK: Between my mother and dad.

RP: And what do you remember most about your mother?

KK: My mother, well, she was the disciplinarian, kind of stern, critical but she was a good cook and a talented seamstress I think. She worked for James Galanos who was a designer, he designed Mrs. Reagan's inaugural dress, the one that was in the, I don't know, the Smithsonian, was it in the Smithsonian or where ever they keep first lady's inaugural dresses. And it apparently grew because of the weight of the jewels on it, or the embellishment on it. But I don't believe she worked on it or anything like that but she was a model maker so he would design the clothes and Jane Yamamoto was his pattern maker. And he designed, he drew the clothes but she (made the pattern) and then there were a group of women including my mother who made models for the shows and then they were sold. But she did flower arranging and was talented in the arts.

RP: Do you know how your parents met?

KK: I think it was, you know, like an arranged or my father saw my mother and so he told his relatives and so it was arranged in that way. My dad was attracted to my mom.

RP: She was born in this country, Nisei, and he was Issei.

KK: Right, he was a young Issei.

RP: Very young. And did your father have a handle on English at all? Did he learn English?

KK: No, his English was not very good.

RP: How about your mother's Japanese?

KK: Fair to middling I think. I don't know how well they, you know, they were able to communicate but I don't think her, you know, they had deep discussions or anything like that.

RP: They got married and then they moved to the Los Angeles area?

KK: Into the Los Angeles area.

RP: Where exactly did you live in L.A.?

KK: My first memory was in West Los Angeles and I think I was about two. I can't remember, is Norwalk near Pasadena or something? I'm not sure of the towns in L.A. anymore. But we, I think, they lived somewhere in Norwalk or somewhere outside, somewhere close to the valley and then they moved to West L.A. And my father worked in a market and we lived in a small, like a shack almost, home behind this market on Sawtelle Boulevard.

RP: What did he do there?

KK: He would work in the market. I'm not exactly sure. I remember they used to wear aprons... he wasn't a butcher or produce person so I'm not exactly sure.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.