<Begin Segment 9>

RP: When you moved to Block 31, Barrack 11, were you also housed with another family or did you have your own room?

KK: No, that was our own place.

RP: So there were four of you.

KK: Five.

RP: Five of you.

KK: I was seven, and my sister was not yet four, let's see, seven, she had her birthday in June so she must have been four, no, not yet five and my brother was not yet three because that was our uneven year. We're two years... I'm two and a half years older than my sister.

RP: Did your mother hold a job in camp or was she busy raising the kids?

KK: No, she was with us and she was fairly active, I mean, she took sewing lessons and that sort of thing but she became ill (between '43-'45) and they suspected... her doctors after camp suspect she probably had rheumatic fever and some form of hepatitis because she had a hole in her liver and an enlarged heart after camp. But she was very allergic to sulfa and (the camp doctors) kept giving her sulfa and that, I believe, it was the allergic reaction to the meds that made her sick, sicker.

RP: Did she have to be hospitalized?

KK: Uh-huh, she was hospitalized for a while and a friend of the family lived in the same block and so they took care of my little brother. And I believe it was about that time that... after my dad worked in the, as a carpenter then he worked at the mess hall, one of the mess halls. And then when my mother became ill, he went to work at the hospital laundry so that he could take our laundry. And so in the late afternoons we used to wait for him because we could see him coming down the road from the hospital, there's a slight, I guess, elevation there. We used to wait for him, my sister and I.

[Interruption]

KK: I can't remember that. I can't remember but I remember when I was in the hospital for a while. I think there must have been an irrigation ditch or something that we went, quote, swimming in and I must have gotten some kind of, I don't know, water, oh, I was immersed for a while, I mean, I wasn't about to drown but I thought I was. And then the chill and everything, I became ill. I don't know whether it was the water or anything like that but I think I was in the hospital for about a week. There were lines of beds that I could remember. (Narr. Note: I had gone out with older girls to a "swimming hole." They were holding my hands, but let go and I was submerged and struggling and swallowed quite a lot of water, which probably caused my illness and hospitalization.)

RP: Most people who were in Manzanar, you know, talk about the dust storms.

KK: Yes.

RP: And so tell us what you recall about that situation and did it affect you or other people in terms of asthma or --

KK: I didn't get any sort of... no, I didn't develop any type of allergy or anything like that but I remember I was taking piano lessons and I remember my dad coming for me. And he was wearing his peacoat and a hat and he wrapped a kerchief around my face and I walked behind him so that I, you know, the dust wouldn't be in my face. That's what I remember very distinctly but I do remember we would have to, you know, stay in our rooms during those dust storms. And they just came, I mean, you could barely see the barrack next door when they came, swept through.

RP: Do you recall if they were still building the camp when you were there?

KK: Yeah, I think they were because as I said my dad, you know, was a carpenter.

RP: So did he actually participate in constructing buildings?

KK: Uh-huh, and I'm not exactly sure what but, yes, he did.

RP: You mention the peacoats and your dad wearing a peacoat. Did you have one too?

KK: No, we didn't get the peacoat, we got World War I jackets I think they were. They were khaki and very outdated looking. I think my mother took them apart and made something else for us. But there were some children who had got (peacoats), maybe they had more adults or whatever in their families because I remember seeing children with peacoat capes or, you know, made out of that blue fabric, wool. I remember when they were issued because I remember my mother putting it out on the bed and we looked at them, sort of puzzled over them. [Laughs]

RP: What do you do with this?

KK: Yes, exactly.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.