<Begin Segment 1>

AC: This is an interview with Isao Kameshige, eighty-year-old Niseiman. It's taking place in Ontario, Oregon, on December 3, 2004. The interviewer is Alton W. Chung of the Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center Oral History Project 2004. So thank you so very much for agreeing to go and speak with us today.

IK: Quite all right.

AC: And I'd just like to go ahead and start off very simply. Where were you born and when were you born?

IK: Okay. I'm not quite eighty yet. [Laughs] Another three, four months and I'll be eighty, but I like to say I'm eighty. It sounds good. But I was born in Galt, California, and when I was still an infant we moved to Campbell, California, that's right next to San Jose. And we lived there for about four years, and then from there we moved Coyote, and that's about another fifteen miles out of San Jose. We were farmers basically, farmers, farming all that time. We stayed in Coyote for about four years, and then from there we moved to Hollister, California. That's where I went through grammar school, I went through high school and graduated from high school there in 1942. And we weren't quite through with that school year, but they graduated us early. And then, of course, that's when the war broke out, in '41, and so in '42, May, we were told to go to camp. And so we were incarcerated at the Salinas Assembly Center. And it was a fairgrounds, and we had to make our living quarters in the stalls, the horse stalls that they had at the fairgrounds. And we had, they gave us cots, and we made, we had to make our own mattresses with straw. And then we stayed there for about three months. I was a waiter at one of the kitchens there.

One of the things that affected me most at that camp was that some of our friends that we used to play high school basketball and football came to visit us and they wouldn't let 'em in. And we couldn't go out, naturally, and we had to talk through the fence and we had to say goodbye by just touching fingers across the fence, and that kind of didn't seem right. But, of course, we were in camp, so there was nothing much we can do about anything.

And then from Salinas Assembly Center, we were transferred over to Poston, Arizona. It's camp number one, there was three camps over there and we were in camp number one, and they shipped us in a troop train. And my dad and I were captains of our car, and we were supposed to watch so that nobody would try to jump out of the cars or cause any problems, and that's how we traveled. And we got into Parker, Arizona, and it must have been about 115 degrees, because it was really warm. And we got into camp, they took us in buses into the camp, and all there was was tarpapered barracks there. And they gave us a room, one room for four of us: me, my dad and mom, and my sister and I. And there's four of us in this one room, and what we had to do was use blankets to have any privacy. And then the floors were open, and, in fact, we had a sandstorm a few days later, and sand was all over inside the room. But we kind of got used to it and cleaned up as much as we could, and we put stuff on the floor so the wind wouldn't come in anymore.

And everything was, like the bathrooms and everything were communities, just like our kitchen was, and that's where I worked, was in the kitchen of the assembly there. I was the waiter, I worked as a waiter, and then I went into cooking and got paid sixteen dollars for being a waiter, and we got paid nineteen dollars for being a cook, so I graduated, I guess. [Laughs]

The second year... I did that for a year, and then on the second year, I got a job driving an Adams 511 road grader, and I used to drive that along the camp roads from Parker to Poston and in the camp itself. We played a lot of basketball, we made our own courts. They requisitioned some telephone poles, and we made four posted backboards, and put a backboard on those four posts. Every block, we used to call those blocks, but there's about, oh, I'd say a dozen barracks in each block, and every block nearly had a basketball court on it. And we made up our own teams, and, in fact, we even played Parker High School, and they were pretty rough. [Laughs] But we had our own basketball games, and that's how we passed our time.

And then three summers I went to work outside on a work crew. Two years I went to Nebraska, a place called Cozad, Nebraska. I worked for a fellow, a rancher named Noal Coward, and he had a sheep ranch plus vegetable crops, not vegetable crops but corn, sugar beets and potatoes. And we worked in those fields, and I worked driving a team of horses for him for hauling manure, sheep manure, so that they dehydrated it and sold that as dehydrated sheep manure, I guess, for gardens and people that wanted it. And one year I went to work for Frank Wada over there in Pingree, Idaho, putting potatoes away in the cellar. And that's about all we ever did in camp.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 2>

IK: And then in 1944, in late November, I was inducted into the army, and I was inducted at Fort Douglas, Utah, and was shipped to Camp Blanding, Florida, where I took basic training. I was in the army there, and we took basic training for sixteen weeks. And while I was in basic, the war in Germany ended, and so when we got done with basic training, they took us to Fort Mead and from there they said that we were going to go the other way. We were supposed to go to Italy, but we were rerouted to Fort Snelling and we were asked a bunch of questions and we had to talk in Nihongo so that they could evaluate how good we were in the language.

And I was sent to Fort Snelling, and I was put in Company H. And we started classes, I went to class, and the material they gave us was pretty tough for me. I could speak it, but I couldn't read or write it. And so I told them I couldn't hack it. So me and another fellow, we decided to re-up for the regular army. We were in the army of the United States, that's the enlisted army, and then we re-upped and joined the regular army. Because they said if we re-upped, we could get out in another year. So we joined the regular army and they evaluated us again, and they put me into the CIC corps. And I had to go to school in Holabird in Baltimore, Oregon -- I mean, Baltimore, Maryland, and we spent, must be about eight weeks, about a couple months there going to school, FBI school. And then I went to New York and had harbor patrol, and then I spent a month there. And then after we graduated from there, they sent us by troop train to Fort Lewis. And I guess I was supposed to be an agent by then.

From Fort Lewis we took on a victory ship and we went to Tokyo, to Zama. Well, we went to Yokohama first, that's where we landed, in Yokohama. And then we went to that... there was a camp called Zama, that's where we were encamped. And then from there I was shipped to Shikoku Island as an agent, as a CIC agent. What we were supposed to do as an agent was go to all these Japanese meetings, school meetings and city meetings, council meetings, and listen to what they presented because they were concerned about Communism coming into the country there. And so that's what we kept tabs on was Communism. But I couldn't understand all of what they were saying, so there was a lieutenant there that was a Kibei, and he understood Japanese pretty well. So I told him, "Well, you write down all the notes and I'll do all the typing, clerk work for you." And so that's how I stayed there and worked for the CIC as a clerk, and typed all his reports. I was there for six months.

But one of those months I had to go to Norton Hall in Tokyo to the school there where I didn't learn nothing and I didn't go to school. They sent me there and I stayed there at Norton Hall and just fooled around in Tokyo for a month. But I don't know what they wanted me to do, but they didn't say nothing to me. They just gave me a room and they'll let us know what to expect. So they didn't say nothing, so I just drove around. They gave me a jeep and told me I can do whatever I wanted, so I just rode around. But then I had to go report back to Shikoku, and then from there, when I got a raise, my shipment to go home came at the same time so I came home. They said if you wanted to stay, they'd give me a raise, but I said no, I'd rather go home. So I came home on a general class ship, and that was a lot better than a victory ship, I'll tell you that. [Laughs]

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 3>

IK: Then I came home because my dad and mom and my sister were here. While I was in the army they moved here from Poston, Arizona, after they closed the camp. And so they were here farming on forty acres of ground, halfway between here and Vale, and they had forty acres of beets. And at that same year that I came back, my sister got married and moved down to Los Angeles, so I took over the farm with my dad and we started farming there with that forty acres and I gradually expanded from there. And I bought a place in Ontario, a twenty acre farm in Ontario, and then we farmed both places for a while.

And that got us into about 1952 when I.... well, it was 1951 when I met my wife at a dance at the community hall and we corresponded. She graduated high school, she went to Seattle, so we corresponded and then I used to go visit her up there. And she finally agreed to marry me. [Laughs] And she's a pretty lady and smart, too, so I guess opposites attract. [Laughs] So we got married in 1952, November 16th, and then we moved to... we had a two-story house where I live right now, and as we progressed, well, we had three children, Randy, and Brian, and Ellen Joyce. And the two boys are still with me, they took over my farm, and we built a new home there and we moved over and just demolished the old house. Well, we moved the old house, we sold the old house and somebody moved it out. Then my sons are both married now, and I have, my sons and daughter both, they're all married, and I have six grandchildren now. And the oldest one is sixteen, and the youngest one is about five.

The boys took over the farm, so I'm practically retired now. I have been semi-retired since about 1980 when I had my neck operation, I couldn't do much work, so the boys took over then. And I recovered, and I've been helping on the farm, and they do most all the decisions now. But I like to drive trucks, so I help driving truck, and I have a garden, about a half-acre garden where I grow sweet corn, and then I grow nappa and daikon for our bazaar, for the church bazaar. Let me see, what else is there? Well, that's where we're at now, but during the time that we were here, I've served on quite a few organizations. Like I've been the treasurer for the Malheur County Onion Growers Association for about three, four years. I've been treasurer of the Malheur Potato Growers Association, and I spent one year as a commissioner on the Oregon State Potato Board. And I was treasurer and sports administrator for the JACL group here. And I've been a member of our church ever since I've come here. I've been one session as the president and I've been treasurer for about three, four years with the church here. And one thing about the church I like about here is because we built it ourselves, and I'm pretty proud about that.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 4>

AC: Let's go back and say, how many brothers and sisters did you have?

IK: I had one brother, but he died in 1941, and my sisters, I had four. Three of them are Kibei Niseis.

AC: What is that?

IK: They were born here, but they went back to Japan and studied. And they came back after graduating. But the only one is the oldest one, she married over there and stayed over there, her name is Harada. But she stayed there and she's still alive over there. And my other three sisters, they all died here. One was in Seabrook Farms in New Jersey, she lived there and she was one of the foremen for the Seabrook Farms. They have a plant there that makes frozen foods and things. And then my other sister was farming in Texas.

In fact, talking about Texas, when we quit farming, we had to sell everything, except for equipment, we stored it. And my brother-in-law was in Texas farming, and he wanted the equipment that we had. So we put it on the train car and shipped it over there. And when we got it over there, there was a lot of things missing. The good things were missing, but the larger things like a Caterpillar tractor and the John Deere tractors and things like that got there. But we questioned it, we asked the authorities about it, but they said they didn't know what happened. Anyway, we shipped everything over there. When we were farming there -- this was in May, so most of our crops were up. In fact, like sugar beets, you got to thin it by hand, and we had that done. And we had money in it, invested in it, and we sold it to a farmer, it was one of our neighbors, and I think they gave us twenty-five dollars an acre or something like that. And then we stored our camera and our rifle and things at the courthouse. And when we got here, we had it shipped over here, but we got our .410 shotgun, we didn't get the camera or anything. But whatever we had there they shipped over here, and it wasn't much left.

AC: So what were the names of your brothers and sisters?

IK: My true sister's name is Mary, and she married Speed Harada in Corona, California, and they were farming down there. And she died about three years ago, maybe two years ago, she had a blood clot. Well, what happened was she was out fishing, deep sea fishing, and she fell or something and scratched her leg and it bled, of course. But she had blood clots from that, and they think that's what caused it. But she was still in her seventies when she died. And my other sisters, two of my Kibei sisters, the one in New Jersey, she died about five years ago. And my other sister was married to that farmer in Texas, she died in L.A. a few years ago. And her name was Date, Sueko Date, and the one in New [Jersey] was Ichiyo Nakai. They're all passed away now. But I've got a lot of nephews and nieces in both New Jersey and L.A. right now.

AC: What's the name of the sister who's in Japan?

IK: Toshiko Harada. And it's a funny thing, my sister's name is Mary Hisako, and Toshiko's daughter's name is Hisako, and she married a Harada. [Laughs] So they both had Hisako Harada, both had the same name. It was coincidence. My dad had some property over there in Hiroshima, and when MacArthur took over Japan, he said that if you lived in the United States, you couldn't own any property there. So when my dad passed away, he gave me all the description of the property, but I figured that I couldn't own it. So I told my sister that lived there to take it, do whatever you want with it, because there was nothing I could do about it. And she sold it to my uncle, and she built a new home. [Laughs] She built a real Western-style home, because when I visited her, I got to stay there, and it was a lot more convenient than some of the other places I stayed. The bathrooms were inside and everything, so it was pretty nice. But my other sister over here was kind of upset because she got the legacy of my dad's. But I told them, well, I didn't know what to do. What I should have done was consult them, but I didn't. I just told my sister to do what she thought was necessary.

AC: They were half sisters?

IK: Yes, they were half sisters. I only have one true sister. My dad was married three times. And they were from his first wife, these three sisters, and then the second wife died while she was still in her twenties. And my mom was his third wife, and her name was Ono, and they come from Hiroshima, too. Her folks lived in Sacramento. Well, they moved to Sacramento, but they lived in Stockton.

AC: You said you had another brother who died in 1941?

IK: Uh-huh.

AC: What happened?

IK: Well, see, he committed suicide. He wasn't very... he was ill. That's a long time ago. And then so it was just me and my sister that went into camp.

AC: How old was he at the time?

IK: Seventeen, I think. And he just graduated from school.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 5>

AC: When did your father first come to the United States?

IK: Oh gosh, I don't know. I can give you his birthday, but I can't give you... but his dad's name was Kozaburo, and he was born in 1846, died in 1920. My grandmother's name was Tatsu, and she died in 1916. But he was married to Kameo, her name was Kameo, his first wife, the second wife's name was Ai. They both passed away now. No, I don't have his birthdate. Well, he was born June 8, 1908. No, that's Itsu. He was born in 1886, I think it was. Yeah, 1886, and he came over at the time, this is just my recollection, he didn't know when his birthday was, so we gave him a July 1st birthday. Says, "Well, that's the middle of the year, so we'll say July 1st is your birthday." And so that's what we went by. If I remember correctly, I think it was 1901 when he first came over here. I'm not sure. I haven't got that record.

AC: And he was a farmer?

IK: He farmed all the time he come here. Well, he first farmed in Stockton in what they called the Sacramento Delta, and he grew potatoes there. I was an infant then, so I wouldn't know what happened, but they moved. That's when he moved to Campbell. And we grew peas and broccoli and vegetables in Campbell. And I remember because back then, that was in the '30s, when we were in Coyote, and we had a pretty tough time. That was the Depression years. And we had teams of horses and equipment, and we had a car and a truck. I remember that was all taken away from us, and all we ended up with was a Model T Ford. And I remember going into San Jose, California, there, to the bank, because we had to sit in that Model T Ford while my dad was talking to the banker for the longest hour. And the longest time he talked to the doctor, not the doctor, the banker, and we wondered whatever became of it. But I was too young to understand what was going on. But anyway, we continued to farm.

And then when we moved to Hollister, it was on McCloskey Road, I remember, and we had a farm there, about an eighty acre farm. And then a gentleman by the name of Ladd, he had the Ladd Hardware in Hollister, and he was good enough to build us a home on his place. He had another place by the airport, and he wanted us to farm. And so we had this eighty acres on McCloskey Road, and then we had this Ladd farm. And he built us a home, and it was a nice home, but it never was painted. And that was one of the things that you noticed in California, you drive around the country, and if it was an unpainted house, it was a Japanese family in it. [Laughs] And that was, we used to go, from San Jose we used to visit my grandparents every summer, and I stayed in Stockton some summers. But traveling from one place to the other, there was a lot of Japanese farmers them days, you know, you take from Modesto to Fresno and all that country, it was all Japanese farmers, lot of Japanese farmers. And you could tell where Japanese lived, them days. Farmers, anyway.

AC: Why were the houses not painted?

IK: We don't know. Well, of course, there were some that were painted, but any house that you see that weren't painted, well, you know there was Japanese. But Mr. Ladd was real nice to us, and we got a turkey every Christmas. He treated us real good there.

AC: How would you describe your father?

IK: Well, he was a hardworking strong sun of a gun. I know he used to, guys used to come around and he used to carry harrows and throw it on the truck, and he used to carry these hundred-pound rice sacks. I remember how strong he used to be. And he worked hard, but I didn't know him that well. We never got down and talked to each other very much, just business is all we ever talked. So it's pretty hard to get to know a person if you don't converse with him. You know what I mean, sit down and talk. We never did that. Because I think Niseis and Isseis, there was quite a bit of difference in thoughts. And he didn't speak English, neither did my mother. He had the broken English, he got by. And then my sisters, when they came from Japan, they never talked English either, so I had to learn Nihongo. That's the reason I could speak Nihongo, but I didn't know the characters or couldn't write it or anything, but I could speak it. That's about it.

AC: So how would you describe your mother?

IK: She was born in Japan, too, and she was like the Kibei Niseis like my sisters, and they expected a lot when they come over here. Because over there, they had stories of money grows on trees, you know, or it was an easy life. Of course, America is the place to be, so that's how they felt about it. When they come over here, they were not very happy, I'll admit that. But they didn't want to go back to Japan, they had to stay here, so tried to make the best of it as they could.

AC: So what kind of hopes did your parents have for all their children?

IK: Well, like I said, I never conversed with them to that depth. But I know that he was planning on going back, he wanted to go back. But he told me that one time, that he told them that he did go back when his first wife died. He went back, and he thought he'd try it again in Japan. And he did farm there for a while, but he says, "What we make here in Japan in a year, I can make in a month in the United States," is what he told them. And so that's the reason he came back over here, to try again, and that's how he met my mother, I guess, at Stockton.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 6>

AC: So what about going to school? Where did you go to school?

IK: I went to... I started grammar school in Coyote, in California, and then from there I went to Hollister grammar school. And then from there I went to San Benito County High School, and I graduated there just before the war.

AC: Were there very many Japanese students there at all?

IK: Oh, yes. I think we had about thirty, twenty-something anyway, graduating. Well, maybe not quite that many. Fifteen to twenty students that were graduating, and we had to memorize the Constitution, the preamble and the Constitution, so that while we were graduating early. So instead of having tests at the end of the year, he says, "Well, we're going to meet together, and you have to memorize the Constitution and the preamble. And then we all, he'd pick on a person and he had to recite what was in the Constitution at certain spots. And so that's how all of us graduated. But I was having a tough time. [Laughs] But I got by.

AC: Do you remember any of your teachers?

IK: Oh, yes. Mrs. Goodnow, I remember, that was in grammar school. I remember she was real strict. The reason I remember her is because there was a girl named Bernice, and she got kind of sassy, and this teacher slapped her. And I remember that really shook everybody up. That's the reason I remember her. [Laughs] I remember the teachers, but I don't remember all their names. She's the only one I remember.

AC: So what was it like going to school back then?

IK: Good. We had a bunch from San Juan Bautista, and there was a lot of Nihonjins there that grew strawberries and lettuce. Well, they grew lettuce, mostly at that time. And there was quite a big bunch of San Juan people that came to our school, too. in fact, our basketball team, there was three of us. There was three Niseis that played on that basketball team for the high school, and Joe Obata, I still... well, I don't see them, but I used to go down and see 'em after I first moved here, because I didn't have anybody here that I knew very well. But I had a good friend named Roy Uyeno that I still talk with every once in a while. But this Joe Obata was our best player, he was good. And then it was me, and there was four of us. Joe had his brother named James that he played with us, too, but he was a little lower grade, so he was usually starting with us. And then we had a Japanese basketball team that traveled, too, that we used to call ourselves the Purple Bombers. [Laughs] And we played in San Jose and Salinas and Watsonville, we played those teams there. That was when I was still going to high school. But there was no complications there.

AC: I want to go back to something. You had mentioned that when you were down in, I think it was Coyote, that's when the Depression hit. And you had horses, cars, trucks, and property there, and you lost it all?

IK: Well, we didn't have property, we just had the equipment for farming. Yeah, we lost the major portion of it. All we had left was a Model T Ford pickup. And then from there we got, I think we just started over again. And we grew broccoli there in Coyote, I remember that, and we had to cut it while it was still wintertime when it was cold and rainy. And when we moved to Hollister, it was pretty good there. But we never got rich, I'll say that. [Laughs]

AC: So your favorite sport, the things you loved to do when you were in high school was play basketball? That was your sport?

IK: Yes, that's about all I did. Well, I played basketball and played a little football, but trouble was... there wasn't trouble, but we had to work. We all had to work, and I had to go home and do irrigation or whatever. And so we helped out on the farm.

AC: And so that was the expectation of all the children, to come home and work on the farm?

IK: Yeah. Most of them have to go home. That's the reason basketball was all we could play, mostly. I used to drive cars when I was twelve years old. [Laughs] We had to learn how to... well, I drove a tractor, too, when I was thirteen or fourteen. That was when the first tractors started to come out. We had a team of horses that used to get out, and we used to have a lot of trouble with them. So when the tractors came, it was pretty nice.

AC: So who did you sell your produce to?

IK: Well, like the tomatoes, we had a lot of tomatoes in the cannery, Del Monte cannery company used to buy that. And the Spreckles Sugar took over all the sugar beets, so we had to haul that to Spreckles and Salinas. And we had garlic and lettuce, too, they came and bought those. We didn't have no certain place to go.

AC: So you'd all load up the truck and drive to Salinas?

IK: Yeah. And then we started growing seed for Rohnert Seed, and we used to grow carrot seed, some other types of seed. And their owners were pretty close to us, our operation, so it wasn't too bad of a job getting it to them.

AC: Did you ever go to Japanese school at all?

IK: Yeah, we had, our school didn't start until real late, because we didn't have any and they wanted to start one. And so we went to Japanese school, I think we had it for about three years, and we started at, just went to school on Saturdays and we started at Book 1. They call that, the alphabet katakana and hiragana. Katakana is the basic alphabet, and hiragana is a little more upgraded, but it's the same alphabet, it's more sophisticated. And the characters were all derived from hard kanji. But I got to the point where I could read the... well, I could still read the hiragana, but the kanji, I have no idea what it stands for. [Laughs] But that's as far as I got.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 7>

AC: So you graduated from high school by learning the Constitution, you graduated. And then war broke out. Do you remember where you were when the war began?

IK: Well, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on a Sunday, and so we heard it Sunday night, we were home, and then we couldn't believe it. But it was a shock to us, to my parents, too. You can just hear 'em, they just said, "Oh, my god." But then after that, there was a lot of stories going around that the farmers were growing their crops so the arrows would point to the airport, or they were radioing the submarines or something with their two-way radios and all that. So that's the reason they confiscated all our radios. We couldn't have shortwave on our radios. And we couldn't carry any, have any guns. And any Japanese literature was banned. There was a lot of things like that went on. So we had to burn all of our stuff, because they'd come in and inspect you if you didn't. So we did all of that. Let's see, that was in 1942 already, spring of '42. We heard stories like that, and then we start, they start talking in the papers about we'd have to go into camp and all that. We couldn't believe it, but then we got orders that you have two weeks to prepare. And they told us to make sure you have good shoes and all your personal belongings to take along with you. And so we had to crate everything up, what we wanted to take. Rest of it we had to sell or do something with it. So I don't know what happened to our household goods or furniture or anything, we just left it in the house.

AC: And someone else moved into the house?

IK: Oh, yes. We don't know who, because we went to camp, and after that we didn't know what went on behind us.

AC: What were you feeling when all this was going on?

IK: Well, I was a young kid yet, so it affected me to wonder what's going on. We're citizens, why should we go into camp? There was nothing we could do about it then. We tried to make do with what we had and get along.

AC: What was the feeling when this order came down saying that you've got two weeks to prepare? What were people thinking; what were people saying?

IK: Well, there wasn't much you could say, is there? You get an order to do something like that, you just try to carry it through the best you could. That's what we did, we said, "Well, shou ga nai." That's, "Can't help." Of course, I guess like the Isseis and Kibeis probably felt that, well, we started it, we have to pay for it. I don't know what they thought. It wasn't a good feeling, I'll say that much. And there were some Caucasians that felt sorry for us, too. Like you say, there was nothing you could do about it. An order is an order.

AC: Did you have to leave any treasured possessions behind that just disappeared?

IK: No. We didn't have any, like some people may have swords and things like that from, relics from Japan, but we didn't have anything like that.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 8>

AC: Now you said that you went to this "assembly center" in Salinas. How did you go from Hollister to Salinas?

IK: Bus. They took us by bus.

AC: What did you think when you entered this place?

IK: What could you think? [Laughs] "What is this, anyway?" That's what everybody was saying, "My god, what are we doing here?" Well, they couldn't figure it out either. Like I say, an order's an order, there was nothing we could do about it. There was some, lot of crabbing, but like I say, what could you do about it?

AC: You had a horse stall, essentially?

IK: Yes.

AC: And you had to make your own mattresses. What was that like? What did it smell like?

IK: Well, we had to clean it up first. We swept it out. I'm used to horses. [Laughs] So it didn't bother me too much. Because that smell was there, there was no doubt about that.

AC: So how long were you in this horse stall?

IK: I think we were in there from May 'til July. Yeah, I think about three months. But, you know, to pass the time away, we used to play, we'd make up baseball teams and played softball. In fact, at one time, we were playing softball, and some people came in for news, I guess, filmed our playing out there. I don't know what they said about it. Probably, "These guys are having fun in camp." [Laughs] We had to do something to keep ourselves occupied. We couldn't just sit around, so that's what we did.

AC: How many people were in this "assembly center"?

IK: I have no idea. There was quite a few people. We held dances and things like that.

AC: Were there any guards at this center at all?

IK: Oh, yeah, oh, yeah.

AC: What were they like and where were they?

IK: Well, they were on, they had towers. They weren't exactly towers there, not like what we had in camp. In camp we had towers where the soldiers sat and watched. They had soldiers there, but I don't know where they were stationed. I didn't look for them.

AC: They didn't really have much contact with them?

IK: No. They'd come in, like issuing us our blankets and things like that, they did that. Then they'd be at the office, but we'd never see them.

AC: So what else, you were issued blankets, what else were you issued when you were at this "assembly center"?

IK: Let me see. I know we had blankets, and they gave us these bags to put the, stuff the straw into. That's about it, I guess.

AC: How were you fed?

IK: Well, we had mess halls. Oh, they gave us a cup and a spoon I think it was we had to carry with us. And if I remember correctly, I'm not too sure about that. But then you go in the mess hall and you have a buffet line, you just take what you want.

AC: What kind of food did they have there?

IK: Well, we got, like in camp, we got a lot of mutton and a lot of beef tongue and liver, things like that. And I had to make rice, I used to cook rice, and we tried to make the best okazu we could. Okazu is a mixture of vegetables and whatever you have. And then we cooked that tongue and things and put it out there, but a lot of people wouldn't eat it. So we got by. It wasn't the best of foods. [Laughs]

AC: So you made your own okazu in the "assembly center"?

IK: Oh, yeah.

AC: Where did you get the... in the cafeteria you'd get the food?

IK: Uh-huh. Well, they had this mess hall, they used to call it, well, we used to call it a mess hall, and they, I guess the army would bring in the food, the raw food, and they cooked it all in there. We had our own cooks and waiters and things, and they'd serve the food in there.

AC: And you said that your friends would come by, but they wouldn't allow you to do anything?

IK: [Shakes head] I didn't care for that.

AC: How did you feel?

IK: It's disconcerting, I'll tell you that.

AC: And you said they had a double wall of barbed wire, they could reach through and you could reach through?

IK: No, it's just a single wire. It wasn't barbed, it was just a wire fence. We just touched fingers between the wires. They were good enough to come see us anyway. Those people were pretty good friends of ours, and we played basketball, football.

AC: Did you ever see them again after that?

IK: No. My friends that I know like Roy Uyeno, he says he sees them, he knows them.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 9>

AC: And after three months in the "assembly center," put you in these troop carriers.

IK: Troop trains.

AC: Troop trains. What was that like?

IK: Hot, sweaty, and it was a lot of soot around the trains, too. And so it was a terrible ride.

AC: Did you have seats?

IK: Oh, yeah. We had seats and everything, but you had to stay in that one car. You couldn't move from that car.

AC: You said you and your father were captains of the car.

IK: Well, my dad was supposed to be the captain and I was his lieutenant. [Laughs]

AC: How did you get the job?

IK: I don't know. I really don't know. They just told me what we were, and so just to watch over the group was all we were supposed to do.

AC: Were there any other guards on the train?

IK: Oh, yeah. They'd come through once in a while, yeah. But they were stationed all along the train.

AC: And so on this train, can you describe the car to me? I mean, how many people fit in this car?

IK: Well, it's... if you've never seen an old car, one of those troop trains, it's just a car. I don't know how to explain it, it's just got seats in it. It'll probably hold thirty or forty people in there. But our car wasn't full. We only had, I think we only had about twenty people in there.

AC: Could you open the windows?

IK: Oh, yeah, we would open the windows and look out. But we couldn't get off, we never got off until we got to Parker, Arizona.

AC: So you could open the windows, open the shades, but it was just really hot in this car because it was in the summer, middle of summer?

IK: Yeah, in July. Then it was hot when we got there, too.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 10>

AC: So you rode into Parker, Arizona. Was this another assembly point?

IK: No, no, it was just a depot there.

AC: A depot.

IK: And then by bus we went into Camp I, it was about a twenty-mile drive.

AC: In Poston?

IK: Poston.

AC: Poston.

IK: Like I say, there was three camps, and we were in Poston I.

AC: Describe this camp. What was it like?

IK: Well, you've seen pictures of it, of course. That's just the way it was, it's just barracks, lined up barracks, and they had blocks. Each block, you know, Block 16, we was in Block 16. We was in Block 16, there's Block 32. Each block had about a dozen of those barracks, and you had a mess hall with each one, and you had a community bathroom and you had a community shower, and that's about it. And you make do with what you had.

AC: There was barbed wire all around this whole place?

IK: No, there wasn't. Yeah, I guess there was. Yeah, there was barbed wire, and then there was a sentry point on top, and there was a gate that you had to come through. Yeah, there was, come to think of it. I never went to the edges, so we was in the middle of the camp.

AC: How did you feel when that bus pulled in, you see the gate close behind you?

IK: [Laughs] You don't see it. We're just looking ahead to see what we're getting into. And when they assign us our barracks and our room, so then we just, my folks and I, we just carried our luggage and went there and that's what it was. They just had cots sitting out there, and they issued us blankets and that's about it.

AC: So just you, your mother, your father, and your sister. Where were your other sisters?

IK: Well, they were in, one of 'em was, moved to Texas, she wasn't there. The other one was in a different block, because she was married, and she lived in Sunnyvale, so it was a little bit different. And so they lived in a different block, but they moved out right away. They went to Seabrook Farms instead.

AC: So you could move out of the camp?

IK: Well, there were requests for workers, that's when you signed up to go work someplace, and there was a big request from Seabrook Farms. And they had a camp over there, and they lived in homes, though, but they allocated certain homes that they could have, and they were small ones that the workers used to use to have before. But a lot of the workers quit because they went in the army or went to work for the government, for building ships and things like that. So they were short of workers. And so they requested it, and this bunch went over there, and they had a big group over there. And they've got a museum there, too. I went to see it, in fact. They had it in the basement of their activity hall, and it was similar to -- have you ever seen our museum here? Oh, you have? Well, I went to see their museum, and I went to see the museum at, in Washington, D.C., they have one there. I haven't seen the one in L.A., I hear they have a nice one there. But I'm proud of ours, we have at our, Four Rivers here. They did a real good job on that.

AC: Now, you've mentioned that when you moved into your barracks, the floor was open. What do you mean by that?

IK: Oh, it's just boards put together, see, and there's cracks in between the boards. And, well, between the rooms, too, there's cracks and there's knotholes in the walls that you could see through. [Laughs] The girl next door covered hers. But, yeah, it was just bare barracks with tarpaper on the outside. But the longer we stayed there, the people worked at it, and they made, some people had little fish ponds in front of their door, they made gardens, and some had some elaborate deals and made it look real nice, and they had a lot of signs up saying, "Walk in, double in, walk in," and, oh, there was a lot of names that they had, that they put in on their own. And they made it pretty nice with what they had. And they made a lot of benches with extra wood. Like my dad and a lot of other people that went and collected, I forget what you call those weeds, but there were some places over there that had iron wood, and they were looking for iron wood. People found iron wood, and then there's shrubs there that they made canes with. Then they took the roots and made ashtrays and things like that. Some people made some nice canes and ashtrays. Nothing else to do, so that's what they were doing.

AC: So what kinds of things did your family to do make your little place in this barracks more comfortable?

IK: He wasn't very artistic. [Laughs] My dad wasn't. We just had the bare minimum for what we needed. There was a potbelly stove, and we had a table and chairs, that's about it.

AC: What did you burn to keep warm?

IK: Oh, we had to collect wood. I think they had coal, if I remember correctly. You had to go get it, but they didn't have too much of it. But mostly we collected wood.

AC: So did they fence off a large chunk of this desert to go scrounging for wood?

IK: No, they'd sneak out. [Laughs] Well, not exactly. There were a lot of freedoms to go out.

AC: Oh, so you could leave the camp for a little while?

IK: Well, if you call it leaving the camp. I wouldn't say leaving the camp, because where are you gonna go? It's all desert all around us. You can scrounge around on the outside of it, but that's about it.

AC: So how did you get out through the fence?

IK: Well, that's the reason at first I said there wasn't any fence, but I remember there was a fence, but I don't think it was that severe of a fence.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 11>

AC: And so you worked at first as a waiter in the mess hall. What did a waiter do? What was your responsibilities?

IK: Well, we had to put the food out, and then, well, we had to get the plates and everything out for 'em, and all they did was come in and eat. So we had to put the rice out there in a bowl, so that they could take what they wanted, and then we had okazu or whatever we had. Mutton, mostly, like I say, and we put that out in bowls, and they took what they wanted. And there was a... if we can get salad, we made salad. We just ate what they gave us.

AC: So you'd show up before mealtime and lay out the meal. Did you have to clean up after the meal?

IK: Oh, yeah. That's a waiter's job. And then we had dishwashers. So we'd clean off the table and then they'd do everything a waiter's supposed to do.

AC: For how many people in this barracks mess hall did you service every mealtime?

IK: You're making me think back. About sixty people, I would say.

AC: In just that one block.

IK: Yeah. Well, it was maybe more than that. I really don't know. Yeah, there must have been more than that. There must have been close to eighty people we had to service.

AC: Then you said you graduated and you became a cook.

IK: Well, see, as a waiter, you only get sixteen dollars a month. A cook you get nineteen dollars a month. And so they wanted to know if I'd be a cook, but what I didn't like about it was you had to get up four-thirty in the morning to cook rice. And when you're seventeen years old, four-thirty in the morning is pretty early, especially when we used to go to dances and things like that, well, you get home late. And so I quit, and that's when I started driving the grader. That was a nineteen dollar job, too.

AC: So making rice, did you do it over, like, a wood burning stove, make rice that way?

IK: Oh, yeah. Then that chef, he told me how to do it, we have to wash the rice, and then we had a big pan like this that you cooked it in. He told me how much to put in, how much water to use. And then, but on a wooden stove, it don't cook evenly. So I had to stand there and turn that thing, and then check on it, see how long. But the chef knew when the rice would be ready, so he'd tell me when it was ready and I'd have to take it off. But I had to stand there and turn it until the rice was done.

AC: What other things did you have to do as a cook?

IK: Oh, we had to cut the meat, cut the salad if we had any, we had to do all that. And then we had to dish it out. But that chef, I heard that he was in Salinas, had a restaurant now. [Laughs] But he had a bunch of boys, and he's probably passed away by now. But his boys took over that restaurant, I hear. I wanted to go there, but I never did get there.

AC: So you said you had dances. Did they have a rec center or something like that?

IK: Yeah. They had kind of a small, on barrack was for kind of a rec center. I used to be the disc jockey because I didn't care to dance. Well, I didn't know how to dance, let's put it that way. So I used to be the disc jockey. Well, me and a couple other guys, Joe [inaudible], and another kid, we used to do that. And they were dancing out there quite a bit. But they want certain kind of music, swing dances, and then they wanted slow dances once in a while, and so we had to pick all the tunes out. Of course, in them days we had records, you know, and not discs like now. And we had a turntable, and these people brought these records from home, so we had those to play.

AC: So did you ever go on any dates with any women in camp?

IK: I never did, but there were some people that were on dates, yeah.

AC: Did they ever go and sneak out under the fence and get privacy someplace?

IK: No, they just went together is all. You ain't going to find any privacy in there, in camp. There used to be a water tower, sometimes they'd go underneath the water tower and talk or something, that's about it.

AC: So driving a grader, how did you get a job doing that? I know it's about the same pay as a cook, but...

IK: Well, I had some friends that were doing it. In fact, he lives in Mountain View right now in California. But him and his brother and cousin, they were driving graders, and they needed another driver, so they asked me. Because I worked with them on a tractor over there in Cozad, Nebraska, and they knew I could drive equipment. So they asked me, so I said, "Okay, just show me how." And the grader's got a whole mess of handles up on top here, and one to lower, one to lift, and I learned all that. But it was no problem.

AC: So you just drove the grader between camps and through camps just to make the road flat?

IK: Uh-huh. And then we'd grade clear up to Parker, we had to grade the whole road, and so we'd be going all day on that road. It's all gravel road.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 12>

AC: But in the meantime, before you even did that, you went to Cozad, Nebraska, to work for Noal Coward?

IK: Yeah.

AC: What was that like? You went by yourself?

IK: Oh, no, this in a group. They wanted some workers, it comes into the office there, they had office requests for workers, and this came in. And the San Juan people, they got together and they had a group, and so me and Roy Uyeno, we're from Hollister, we joined that group and we went over there and worked for him for two summers.

AC: And this was collecting the sheep manure?

IK: Pardon?

AC: Collecting the sheep manure or drying it, or what did you do? [Laughs]

IK: Well, they gave me a team of horses to drive. I never drove a team of horses before. They told me that they wanted me to drive a team of horses, so I said, "Well, sure, I'll try it." And so we have a team of horses, and they have a lot of Mexican national laborers come in. And on this wagon, you have washtubs. They put the washtub on the ground and these laborers, they filled the washtubs up with manure, and then two of them hoist it up, and then there's one guy on top that dumps it in the wagon. And then when it gets full, well, then I just drive the wagon up to the dehydrator, they called it. And you go up this ramp, and you dump it, and you run it through this dehydrator, and it comes out dry, and they put it in sacks and then they ship it out.

AC: So how did you jump this wagon?

IK: Oh, they just have something on the bottom and then they...

AC: Oh, it opens up?

IK: Yeah, there's a handle there, then you just open it up and it all dumps out. And then that one year, the first year, I had a bunch of Spanish people, that's where I learned a lot of bad words in Spanish. [Laughs] But they were real Mexican people. They had these shawls on, and very big hats, and that's how they worked. And then the next year I had a bunch of Indians working for me. They camped there, right there in camp. And then we had to pack our own, the potatoes that they had, after I got off of the horses. I didn't like that too much anyway. It was easy work. But I went to work with our own group, and we started packing potatoes. And we had to jig the sacks and sew it. And we had a bunch of high school girls who were on the table, and that's how we sacked a bunch of potatoes and shipped it out. The one in Nebraska gets some bad hail storms, I'll tell you. We were there one time when the hail storm hit, they were a big hail storm. It seemed like it would knock everything apart. And the cars and things, they get all the dents in them when they come that big. I remember that about Nebraska.

AC: So you'd mentioned that you'd also gone to work for Frank Wada in Idaho.

IK: Pingree, Idaho.

AC: Pingree, Idaho. What were you doing for him?

IK: Oh, all we did was went to work for him for about a month is all we did. In fact, I think that was one of the years that I came home from Nebraska and then I went to work for him. He puts potatoes into storage, and he needed people to stack it. The trucks would come in and they'd have these elevators. And he had big cellars, and he packed it clear up to the top. And I was up on top leveling it off and things for him. And then the friends I was with, well, they were down on the bottom unloading it into these conveyors. And he had a lot of spuds; he's a big grower. Well, Frank Wada died, but his boy is now one of the bigger growers in that area. He's got farms clear up into Montana.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 13>

AC: You had also mentioned that you played a lot of basketball in the camp, and that you actually even played against Parker High School. How was that?

IK: Rough. They were pretty big fellows. Well, I don't think they did anything on purpose, but they were rough players. [Laughs] I don't know if they played that way in their league or not, but we gave 'em a bad time. I mean, we gave 'em a good battle. We had some pretty good players on our team. In fact, there was one kid there that I admire. His name was Moose Kurimura, I mean... well, his name was Kunimura, anyway. Moose was the older brother, and this guy, he could really... I mean, he'd be falling backwards and he's shooting, and he'd still make the basket. He was our top scorer, and I really admired him. But he lives in Gilroy too. But we played, like you say, we played a lot of basketball. Well, you got to do something to keep them, especially over there, we played at night because daytime it's so hot, you couldn't, it was so hot you couldn't even walk around. There's no air conditioning, what we had was water coolers for our homes. And some people, like what we did was our group, our kids, they had one apartment there, one room, and we made a trapdoor and we dug a cellar, and we used to go in there and play cards or whatever. And it wasn't very big, it was only probably about ten by ten or so, well, it wasn't even that big. And we'd crawl in there, but it was cooler down in the basement, see, and we made our own. And some of those other people, they used to... see they used to say if it's dark it's cooler, so they used to close up all their windows and everything and just stay in there and sleep, read or whatever.

AC: So what did you do with the dirt that you dug out of the cellar?

IK: We just hauled it out. We used buckets and we just dumped it outside.

AC: No one said anything?

IK: Oh, no, you could do that if you wanted to, but it's a lot of work. [Laughs]

AC: So what did you use for lighting when you were playing cards?

IK: Well, we had made an extension into there. We improvised. [Laughs] Well, see, you have a lot of electricians and plumbers that have to work in there, and they'd help you out. If you needed something, why, they'd try to get it through requisitions or something, get it for you. But it was tough when it was hot. You could never go outside.

AC: Explain to me, how did this water cooler work?

IK: Oh, they still had 'em. It looks like a regular cooler, except you had to have water that drips through the radiator. And the air comes through that water and it cools you off. They have a fan behind that radiator and it cools you off. And you had to buy your own, of course. We had catalog books that we could, whatever we, if we needed something awfully bad, we'd send through the catalog and get it.

AC: And you'd save your money from working these jobs?

IK: You didn't make enough to. [Laughs]

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 14>

AC: And you said in 1944 you were inducted. Were you drafted?

IK: Uh-huh, yes, I was.

AC: How did it feel being in this internment camp and being asked to serve for this country?

IK: Well, I was one of... there was a lot of controversy at the time. In fact, we had some of those meetings and things, and we had some rallies, campfire rallies. But, and there was what you call "no-no boys." And a lot of those real radical people were sent to Tule Lake, but I was willing to serve. I felt that I should and I would.

AC: What was your motivation?

IK: 'Cause I'm American. [Laughs] That's all I can say.

AC: So when you were inducted you went to Fort Douglas, Utah.

IK: Uh-huh.

AC: So you left the camp, you said goodbye to Mom and Dad and your sister. How did that feel?

IK: Well, what could they say? It was up to me. They said it was up to me, so I said, "I'm going," and I just went. There was a lot of us that went.

AC: How did your parents feel about you, you know, serving?

IK: They didn't say nothing, they didn't think nothing of it.

AC: And so what happened to you at Fort Douglas, Utah?

IK: Well, you had to register, they give you a physical, they went through all that physical stuff, examined you, and you're A-1, well, then just stayed in the barracks until you got your orders. That's all we did there in Fort Douglas. They gave us a physical is what it amounted to.

AC: Then you were transferred to Camp Blanding, Florida? Where is that in Florida?

IK: It's just north of Orlando, and it's between Orlando and Ocala, I guess you've heard of Ocala, I don't know whether you did or not, but it's close to Ocala, Florida. And the camp isn't there anymore. I was in 208, Company B, and I still remember my number. You had to remember that. It's 37752636. I can't ever forget it because you can't get back into camp if you don't know your number. And if you're fooling around outside and one of the sentries asked you, "What's your number?" then you had to know it. So I memorized mine, I guess everybody did. We was too tired to go out to do anything, we bivouacked and basic training was tough.

AC: What kind of things did they make you, were they having you do in basic?

IK: Well, just regular, what everybody else had to go through, we had to go. Calisthenics where we had to do all these exercises and climb the rope, and then we had artillery where we had to shoot the guns, and then hand grenades and we had to use hand grenade guns. And then we had to do the machine gun fire drill where they have a fence that you have to stay under, and you have to stay under that fence, and then a machine gunner would fire over your heads, you know. And they're shooting real bullets. And we have to crawl a certain amount, way to get through this place, and then we'd come up. It was tough. Then we went out in bivouacs where you had to march about, oh, twenty miles sometimes, and then you'd camp out, and then you're sleeping in these little tents, then you march all the way back. You'd march all night, you march in your sleep, actually. [Laughs] So, well, I guess that's the training, that's what the training is for. But since the war ended over there in Germany, our criteria was to be in sixteen weeks of training, but I think they cut us off at thirteen and then they sent us to Fort Meade, and then from there they reclassified you. Well, at that time, my mother had a heart problem and she had a heart operation, so I got separated from my group because I got to go home on furlough to visit my mom, and she was in a hospital there. So I visited her, and I was gone for two weeks, I got to go home for two weeks. Then when I got back, my unit all left, so I had to jump in another unit, and this unit went to Fort Snelling. And I was told to go to classes there, and like I said earlier, I couldn't hack it. So neither could this other kid that I was with, we said... he knew what to do, so I says, "Well, let's do it." Okay, so we did that, and we got stuck into CIC, and that's the best place in the army is the CIC.

AC: Why is that?

IK: Well, it's the Counterintelligence Corps, they called it. And you don't have to wear a uniform all the time, you don't have to wear, nobody wears any gray, you're either a sergeant or, well, the highest grade you can get was warrant officer, but you don't have to even show that. You got a certain amount of authority, let's put it that way. But that Holabird used to be an FBI school, so we went there, and we learned how to pick locks and do surveillance work. In fact, we had to train in the town of Baltimore, we had to surveil, we had to follow, a certain person was designated as the culprit, and we, two of us had to follow him. And we'd take turns, and he'd say, "it's your turn," and he'd walk away. We did all that just to learn all that stuff. I got to learn how to fingerprint, and there was a lot of things we had to do. And we still had to do language, too. There was a couple of fellows there that they wanted to, they asked him to stay back and be language teachers, because they were good at... there was one kid that I played bridge with, and he went to Japan, schooling, and he was pretty good at it. So they wanted him to stay, but he didn't want to stay.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 15>

AC: So your mom had an operation while you were in basic?

IK: Right after I got done basic.

AC: How did you feel about all of a sudden, my gosh... this was over, she was still in Arizona, right?

IK: Yeah, she was in camp, and she was in the camp hospital. And she didn't look good, but she survived it. By the time I left, she wasn't up and about, but she was able to speak to me and everything, so she was all right.

AC: How was it going back to the camp after being away for so long?

IK: Tell you the truth, I don't remember traveling. I mean, it just, you just try to get the train that you can get a hold of. Well, there's an experience that I'd like to tell you about. I was going from Fort Douglas to Camp Blanding, and we were on these... these weren't troop trains, these were regular passenger trains we were on then. And we stopped in San Antonio, Texas, on the way. And they let us off to go eat at this restaurant, and we had a half a day, I think, layover there, and so we could do whatever we wanted. And I was with, oh, half a dozen... there was four of us all together, that we were going together. And this lady come along, we were just walking on the street, this lady and her daughter come along, and she asked us if we'd like to go see some of the flowers that are in bloom. And we says, she got a car, so she says, "You can ride with us and we'll take you to see some of these flowers and gardens." So we said, "Sure." We had nothing else to do, and so we got in her car and she drove us to this garden and showed us all the flowers and how pretty they were and all that. And went to another place, and she wanted to know if we wanted to go to a museum and things like that. And then she said, she wanted to take us to her home and serve us tea, so we said fine. So we went over there and she was serving tea, and I was talking with her and with her daughter. And she started asking where we were from and all that. Actually, I found out she thought we were the Chinese people that were at the air base over there learning how to fly. They had a lot of Chinese people there that was learning how to fly, and they thought we were Chinese. [Laughs] And when I told her we were Japanese, that we were in the army and we were going to Camp Blanding, she kind of, her attitude kind of changed. [Laughs] So she took us back and said goodbye and that was it. I'll never forget that. But there was a corps of Chinese pilots that were training over there in Texas at that time, and she took it for granted that that's what we were. But anyway, that's the way things go, I guess.

AC: So at the camp hospital where your mom was, what was that like? I mean, did they have, like, real doctors, or just interns?

IK: No, they had real doctors, because they had a lot of doctors that was interned. Must have been good doctors as far as I know. They were good doctors, yeah.

AC: Well, I mean, heart specialists, that's pretty specialized there.

IK: Well, they might have got somebody in to do that, I'm not sure. But there must have been other heart patients there in that big of a camp.

AC: Was it a good hospital, was she comfortable there?

IK: Well, it was clean, it was neat. They had it fixed up pretty nice. Of course, it was still the barracks. It wasn't segregated into rooms, it was one hall. And she was in one of the rooms, of course, and they were all, just like what we did in our rooms, they had blankets for privacy, and that's about all they had. But it qualified as a hospital.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 16>

AC: So you went to this FBI school, and then you got posted to New York Harbor Patrol. How was that?

IK: We didn't learn nothing. [Laughs] We stayed at a camp over there in New York. I don't remember the name of the camp, but we had to report eight o'clock at this tugboat. It was a tugboat that we were supposed to be studying, and we were let out at five, and we'd go to Times Square or wherever we wanted to go. We had 'til eight o'clock the next morning. And on the tugboat, we were supposed to be taking lessons on harbor patrol, but we drove around the Statue of Liberty and all around the bay there. But we didn't get much lesson on that. We just rode around and looked. We did that for two weeks. We didn't have any complaints, but the trouble was we didn't have any money either, so we'd go into Times Square, we sure made use of the USOs.

AC: So you and your group were training to go to Europe, and all of a sudden, peace breaks out in Europe. How did you feel?

IK: Great. So we thought, well, gee, we won't see no combat then over there. But they said, well, we still got this other war we got to contend with, so that's the reason they sent us to school.

AC: So you ended up, from New York you went to Fort Lewis, and you were just awaiting orders. Did you say you guess you were an agent by then? [Laughs]

IK: Yeah, I guess I was. We never had any graduation or anything. Well, they have a classification in the card, see, they tell you what class you are. And then the camp over there, they called it Camp K. Well, that was the section that it was. All the buildings were alphabetical order, you know, I was in Company H, there was Company A, B, C and D and H, and I was in Company H. And Company K was the gathering place. And then from there they sectioned you out to whatever school you should be going to. And like I say, I went to classes, and I spoke in front of the classes and things like that, but I just, I told them I couldn't hack it, I couldn't see all that. Because we had to learn all the names of the ships, and the airplanes and the ships, by the size and the silhouette. You had to go by that and you had to name 'em all. I says, heck, I wasn't going to do that. I couldn't see no use in it. So me and this other kid, well, let's do this, so we did that. We joined the regular army.

AC: Yeah, so you said you could reenlist, so the regular army was where you were not draftees. That was the Army of the United States was draftees, but if you reenlisted and you volunteered, then you became a member of the regular army.

IK: The regular army, yeah.

AC: So what was the, you know...

IK: Difference? There was no difference. It was the same thing. And then they put us, from New York, I went on a troop train all the way across to Fort Lewis in Washington, and then from there we boarded the ship to Japan.

AC: You had mentioned that you got on a victory ship. What was that like?

IK: Victory ships are just steel. They're made out of steel, and they're just basically a floating tub. And they have no amenities to it. They got bunks in the hold all the way down to the bottom, they had different levels, and they're all bunks down there, and they had a kitchen and a latrine, that's all there is to that thing. And so there was nothing to do on there, just a ship. That's what they call a victory ship. They were built rapidly so they could ship all the people from, even to Europe, that's what they used. But coming home, we was in the general class, and that was a lot better. We had fresh water for showers. Well, I did, because I worked in the infirmary coming home, this guy stopped me and he says, "How about picking up a couple guys and working in the infirmary, so I said sure. So I picked up a couple guys from the Portland area, and we worked in the infirmary, all we did was take care of the person that lost it. And we had him in a padded cell, and we had to supply him with food and water, whatever he wanted, watched over him. And then we watched over the lavatory, is all we did. But we had fresh water for showers. [Laughs] And the rest of them, they had salt water. And that salt water shower is just, they doesn't have it. It doesn't even feel like you took a shower.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 17>

AC: So you said you landed in Yokohama and then you want to Camp Zima?

IK: Zama.

AC: Zama, in Tokyo. How was it like going back to going to Japan?

IK: Well, to tell you the truth, it was kind of discouraging because downheartedness is what I felt. Because when we had our textbook in Japanese school, we read about all these children that have, dress alike, and they're singing songs and going to school and all that, didn't see any of that. The kids I seen were all beggars. They were, it was just right after the war was over, see, we were the occupational forces. And these kids were begging for "chocoretos" or "cigarettos," they wanted. Because the parents wanted the cigarettes. And it really affected me because I didn't think they'd be that, it got that bad. I felt sorry for them. And we used to walk down on Ginza there, and that's in Tokyo. We smoked a lot them days, and so we'd smoke, and people would follow us, throw our stubs away. They got a stick with a nail on the end of it, or a needle or something, and then they, what you'd throw away, they'd pick up, and they douse the flame right away. Or either that or we'd step on it or something, anyway. They put it in little cans, and rip the paper off, and take the tobacco and put it in little cans, and they'd collect that stuff from behind us. And then we used to, from Zama, we used to go in to Tokyo in these trains, commuter trains, they were, they were small. And we used to ride those into town, and the children used to chase after us begging for chocolates. And it's a lot different now. I went back in 1980, and boy, it's completely changed. It's more like Japan. At that time, I guess they were suffering. I felt sorry for them.

AC: Did you hear about the atomic bombs being dropped?

IK: Yes, we did.

AC: How did that make you feel?

IK: Well, I went to see it afterwards.

AC: How was that?

IK: Well, it was rebuilt already. By 1980 it was rebuilt. And the town was rebuilt, but they had a museum there. And if you ever go through that thing, it'll make you sick, just about. The way the people, the skin melting on their faces and hands and all that. It's just devastating to me. But I couldn't imagine what it was like until I seen that museum.

AC: So you didn't go there while you were stationed in Japan?

IK: No. Like I say, I had relatives in Hiroshima, so I was trying to get there. But I was only in Japan for six months, and during that time I applied for my furlough to visit my folks' relatives up there in Hiroshima. And three things come in all at one day. My furlough came through, I could go, and my raise in pay came in, and... well, I know three things came in at one time, and then the captain asked me, "What you want to do?" I says, "I want to go home." So I nullified everything except my orders to go home, and I took that and went home. I never did get to go see Hiroshima.

AC: So while you were there, you just attended meetings and tried to listen in to see whether they were leaning toward...

IK: That's how I started, but I quit going, because I couldn't understand it anyway, I told them. His name was Warrant Officer Kikuchi, and I was under him. And we used to go together, and I said, I told him that, "It's no use me coming with you. You want me to be a bodyguard?" Because I was carry a .45 all the time. I said, "I'd just as well stay home and type what you send in." He said, "That's all right. You'll have to ask Captain Jackson." He said, "That's fine." We had quite a few agents there, anyway. But Kikuchi's the only one that really understood Nihongo. The other ones were Caucasians and they, I don't know, they were there as agents, too, but they didn't go to these meetings like we did.

AC: So did people know that you were Americans when you're sitting there in the back?

IK: Uh-huh. I used to go out to the, well, see, I had jeep of my own then, too, so I used to go out in the countryside. And I could converse with those country people, but the city people, they talked too fast. But the country people talked like my dad and mom, so I could converse with them and that'd be surprised. "You're from America?" I had a lot of fun talking with them.

AC: How was that like?

IK: It was nice. They were real friendly, so it was nice. But I understood that there was a lot of Niseis that were... not Nisei, but some of these people that were just like the Niseis, our group, because we were from America, and they felt that we were going against Japan, I guess. So I heard that some of those people didn't care for Niseis. But the people I met over there, well, Shikoku is an island, see, and it's a little bit off the way. You have to get there on the ferryboat. They got a bridge now, I understand, all the way from Okayama to Takamatsu, and that's a pretty long bridge.

AC: So these farmers, people out in the countryside, because they were on farms, did they fare any better than people who were in the cities during the war or after the war?

IK: I really don't know. I would think they were fed better. [Laughs] Because there was a lot of vegetables out there. And the vegetables looked good. In the cities, they looked awful. So I don't know. I never asked.

AC: I guess you had been stationed at Norton Hall.

IK: Yeah, I spent a month there. I was supposed to go to some sort of school, they never told me what it was, but that's the army for you. They say to go there, well, you go there. And they gave me a room in Norton Hall, and I didn't do a thing. [Laughs] I'd go visit some of my friends that lived in Tokyo there, they were MPs or they were in the Second Cavalry, I remember. Like some of the Fillmore people that live here, I've seen 'em up there. I could go up to their room and visit. But Norton Hall was, I couldn't understand that one. And then they shipped me right back to Shikoku.

AC: So what was your favorite memory of the time that you spent there in Japan after the war?

IK: Well, there was a couple of Caucasian fellows that I used to run around with on Shikoku there, and we used to go out to the bay and shoot our .45s into the bay there. You see something floating out there, and then we'd try to hit that. And we used to chum around together quite a bit. And that one kid is from Philadelphia. And he said, "When you get to the East Coast, make sure to look me up." And I did. When my sister died in New Jersey, I went and visited... well, I went and visited her before she died a couple times, and I stayed in Philadelphia that one time, and so I went to look him up. His name was Tindel, and there was a couple of Tindels in there, but they didn't know the Tindel I knew. So I never did get to find him. And then I was in Washington, D.C., so I went to Holabird in Baltimore to see what my old school looked like, and that was no more. They were all transferred over to... what was that camp that the President goes to?

AC: Camp David?

IK: No, it's a school. I can't think of it now, but I heard they transferred over there now.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 18>

AC: So I guess while you were... your parents and your sister were still in Poston?

IK: Uh-huh.

AC: At the end of the war...

IK: Well, before I went in the army, we came, me and my dad came up here and visited some relative of, second cousin of my mother's.

AC: And you were allowed out of camp?

IK: Yeah, because we were going to relocate. If you're going to relocate, then you can get out of camp. And so we came up here and we talked to them and we stayed here a couple nights and then we went back, and my folks decided to come up here.

AC: But when was this?

IK: This was in '44, I think.

AC: But they didn't relocate until after the war?

IK: Yeah.

AC: Why did they wait?

IK: I don't know. I guess they figured they had a home there for a while, and they weren't sure what they were going to do or what they were going to be told to do. So they just waited it out, and then when the camp was over, then they relocated. They said, well, this is it, you can go wherever you want. There's some people that didn't leave for a while, and they didn't have no place to go.

AC: And so when they moved out here, they bought a forty-acre farm?

IK: No, they rented it. And then there was a family, the Tsukamakis, the name was, and they're related to my mother's second cousin. And they were farming in Caldwell. And they quit farming and they started a grocery store here in Ontario. And so when they quit farming, they sold the truck and tractor and things to my dad, and I don't know what they paid for it or what. But that's how he started. He had one truck and one tractor, and the cultivator parts with it, that's how he started. And my sister used to drive the tractor, the truck. And then when I come back, well, she left.

AC: How was the feeling of having to move out here and having to reintegrate into a postwar community?

IK: My feelings?

AC: Yeah, well, your feelings and also, what did your family go through?

IK: I don't know how they felt. I know they weren't happy, but I just knew some people here. I had one kid here that was in the army with me, and so that's how I started. We started running around together, and then I got to know some people and then we started our own softball team, we started a basketball team and things like that, and get to know a lot of people that way. And I played softball for quite a few years here on the city league. And then we had quite a few people that played basketball, too, so we had a community hall with a basketball court over here, so we were trying to start a league. But it was pretty hard. We never did get started; we just played basketball.

AC: Was this mostly just amongst the Japanese community?

IK: Yes, it was. Yes, it was.

AC: So did you associate mostly with the Japanese community when you relocated?

IK: Yes. And we had quite a few. It was like Oregon Slope and this area here, we had quite a few Japanese people here. A lot of 'em moved out, especially the younger people, they all moved back to the coast. Like us, my kids, they wanted to stay. So there was a few families like that.

AC: How were the relationships between the Japanese community and the Caucasian community right after the war here?

IK: Oh, that was one of the reasons there were so many here, because the feeling was good. I mean, they treated us good. Of course, naturally, there were a few of them that didn't, but you can't help prejudice. But by and large, most of the people treated us pretty good. They realized what we went through. Of course, we had deals where we tried to educate the people what we did go through and what we were. In fact, I had some investment people over from Boise, Idaho, and this is way in the '80s, now. And I had some investments with him, and I had to sign some papers. I said, "Well, I'll be over to sign." He says, "No, I want to come over and see your place." So he came over and he brought his wife with him, and we were sitting there talking and I signed the papers and things. We were just discussing general things. And she says, "It's amazing, you speak such good English," she says. [Laughs] And I had to tell her that we were U.S.-born and we were educated here in America. She thought we were from Japan, I guess, I don't know what she thought, but she didn't know that we were... so there were still some people like that.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 19>

AC: So you had the forty-acre farm in Idaho, and you bought twenty acres here in Ontario. What were you raising?

IK: Sugar beets, mostly. And then we started to grow onions and that's what helped us. We'd grow onions and then we started growing potatoes. And in order to have a rotation, we started growing a lot of grain. And now, from this year, we're growing corn, so we're progressing to the point where we have to rotate the crops in order to have the crops that you want like the onions and potatoes. You can't grow those every year at the same place. So we progressed, and now, in order to do that, you have to have more acres. If you grow more onions, you're going to have to have more acres for potatoes and corn and wheat. So right now we're up to about 650 or so acres now.

AC: You said in 1951 you met your wife at a dance here. How was that?

IK: [Laughs] I don't know how that happened. We were going in, I remember that. You know, it was pretty crowded, and we were all walking in, and she walked back and started talking to me. I said, "Well, let's go uptown, it's too crowded here." Because I said, "I don't dance," I told her. [Laughs] And so we came uptown to one of the Tutantelle, I think it was. Well, she brought her girlfriend with her, and we just talked and went back to the dance and sat around and got to know her. I don't know, I must have called her. She graduated high school, and then she went to work in Seattle. So she was working for a telephone company in Seattle but she was living at a home, a lady's home. She was a widower, I mean, a widow, and she was helping with the housework. She had a big house, so she wanted my wife to help with the house. She lived there, but she worked in town, and then we used to write letters back and forth and then I used to visit her in the wintertime. That's how I got to know her. Then I asked her. Like I said, opposites attract. [Laughs] She was good looking and smart, and so we got married in November of '52.

AC: Did she grow up here?

IK: No, she's from Toppenish, Washington. And she was in camp in Idaho, and their folks and her, they moved out to Jamieson as, they got a farm, they started a farm up there. Her brother still farms in Vale. They had a pretty big family, I think there was eight in the family. They had a home in Jamieson and they farmed, and then they moved to Brogan and then they moved back to Willow Creek, and that's where I met her father and mother and we discussed things. Of course, in our culture, earlier culture, not anymore, but them days, you had to have a go-between, so that we got Mr. Kobayashi, my mother's relative, we got him to be our go-between. [Laughs]

AC: So tell me about that.

IK: Well, there isn't much to tell, because I'd asked her already, and she said okay, and I went and met her folks and everything to make it formal. I had to take him one time, and he talked to the folks and everything. And everything was agreeable.

AC: How was meeting her parents for the first time?

IK: Oh, well, I just wondered what they thought of me. [Laughs] I got by. And they were real nice to me.

AC: So Mr. Kobayashi, being the go-between, he was someone who knew you and was willing to speak to you.

IK: Speak for me.

AC: So what kinds of things did you tell him to go tell the...

IK: Nothing. I mean, that's up to him. That's up to him. Well, see, they converse in Japanese a lot better than I could.

AC: Oh.

IK: But it turned out real good for me. I don't know what my wife is gonna say. [Laughs] We've been fortunate, lucky.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 20>

AC: So when you came back, did you... assume you were very active in the Japanese American community here. Was there a Japanese American league here in Ontario?

IK: We had a softball league, but it was with Caucasians, too. It was a city league, and we had two teams in it. So we played the Caucasians and us, yeah.

AC: What about a, was there a Japanese cultural center or anything like that here?

IK: Not at that time.

AC: An association of any kind?

IK: Well, we had the JACL and we had the Nikkeijinkai they call it, the Japanese association. And the Nikkeijinkai is the one that had that community hall. And then they had our churches, we have the Buddhist church here, and we had the Methodist Christian Church.

AC: And you said you were a member of this church that you still belong to since you came back here, and you helped build the church.

IK: We all did. We were mostly all farmers here. Well, there's a few, there's doctors and dentists and those types of people, but we work in the summertime so it took us two years to build it. But we built it ourselves, and I really thought that was quite an accomplishment. We did a lot of the work in the wintertime, it was cold and snow on the ground and everything, but we still worked inside. I think we did a pretty good job. [Laughs]

AC: So after the war, do you have any thoughts? When this whole redress movement began, how did you feel about that?

IK: Well, it sure as heck didn't pay for what we lost, but it was a little compensation anyway. You have to give JACL credit for that, they went to a lot of trouble just to get that much through. And so I thought it was pretty nice that they did do that, anyway. Whatever we had, we lost what we had down there. So we had to start all over again. May not have had very much, but still, it's something that could have gone back to if we had to. But we didn't have anything left.

AC: You still have some feelings about that or anything?

IK: No, I'm pretty well over it. Better be. [Laughs] Foot in the grave already.

AC: So I guess Bill Hosokawa once named the Nisei the "Quiet Americans." Did this whole thing about redress change any of those attitudes, do you think?

IK: I really don't think so. I don't think... it might have mellowed it, it might have mellowed it, but I wouldn't think it changed very much.

AC: Well, looking back over all that you've experienced your entire life right now, what lessons have you learned about living in America?

IK: The only place to live, that's all I know. Even with the troubles we have. You look at the newspaper, and heck, I wouldn't want to live anywhere else.

AC: So I guess if your father was still alive today and was here seeing all that you've done, your grandchildren, children, what do you think he'd say?

IK: He'd be happy. I'm sorry he had to go so long. He died way back in 1970, so that's when we'd just begun to get started as far as farming goes. Well, like he was talking about working together, that's what helped me a lot, was we had five families that worked together. And we harvested our potatoes and onions together, put our trucks and tractors together to do this, and that's what helped me tremendously. Because on my own, I don't know. You'd have to require a lot of hand labor, and it would have been difficult. And the way the crop prices were, a single person couldn't buy all the equipment he needed. Like onions and potatoes, when you haul those, you had to have four or five trucks at least. So these other guys that helped me, they were bigger farmers so they had trucks, three or four trucks. But me, I just had one or two trucks, and I couldn't have done all of the things that I did. So I'm thankful for them.

AC: You say your sons have taken over the business now. Are they still in, working in conjunction with these other families?

IK: No, no. We've been out of that for, we've been on our own for quite a few years. Well, ever since they've been back.

AC: How was it distancing yourself from that consortium?

IK: Oh, it wasn't any problem. It was all agreeable. In fact, first we had five families, and then we split it up into two families that, two big farmers were over there, and three of us were over here with the smaller farms, and we got together, three of us. We farmed that way for two years. And then those two other fellows, well, they had brothers, they both had brothers. And so they kept going on their own. You accumulate, start accumulating trucks and equipment. And then the three of us farmed for about two years together, and then... well, we didn't farm together, we farmed on our own, but we harvested together. And then after that we just went on our own.

AC: You said in 1980 you had neck surgery. What was going on for you then?

IK: Well, I had a... my fourth and fifth vertebraes were pinching my nerves. I couldn't even comb my hair, I mean, my arms wouldn't go up, so I had to see the doctor. And they x-rayed it and gave me an MRI, that was about when the MRI first come out. And they looked at it and they said it was a pinched nerve, had calcium deposits on my spine and it was pinching my nerve, that's the reason my arm wouldn't go up. So they cut a piece of bone out of my hip and pushed it in my vertebrae there to separate it, and I've been pretty fair after that. But it's never a hundred percent. They said if you get back ninety percent of the use of your arm, you're fine. And I says, "Yeah, that's about what I got." That's good enough. But my lower back used to give me trouble, and then the Japanese doctor here, Dr. Tanaka, put me on exercises, strengthen your muscles around your back, and that helped. Now I'm all right. But backaches ain't no good.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 21>

AC: Now, you've brought all kinds of things here. Tell me about what you've brought here.

IK: Well, that's one of the things I remember in the letter. Well, you don't want to see this, this is my fifty year anniversary the kids wrote. But this is a national magazine we got into, that's my family.

AC: I want to show that up to the camera here.

IK: No, this is just the boys in our family, okay, and it was in the national magazine Farmland, put out by Farmland. And we went through a lot of trouble just to get this one picture in. And those people, that shed that we went to, they put the onions in there, we went to Debrians over here, and every time we haul onions in there, the foreman over there calls me Hollywood because they thought they were filming a film in there. [Laughs]

AC: What was the story behind the picture? Why was it so difficult?

IK: Difficult to do what?

AC: To shoot the picture.

IK: I don't know. They had to have the lighting just right, because it's inside of a shed, and they had to have all these lights inside there, and they hem hawed around. [Laughs] And so they finally, we said, well, we wanted to get all the boys in the family in there. Every one of 'em's there except that one that's in Las Vegas. These are the pictures of... my hobby is golfing, golfing and fishing. But these are the pictures, I got to golf in the television on the Classics, and my son-in-law had a copying machine dealership. He was a manager, okay, he was a manager, and he worked for the State of Nevada. And they were supplying a copy machine for these tournaments. And so he got two free passes. It usually cost four to five thousand dollars to get in. And so he got me in on it, and this is a Senior Classic I played in. And it shows who the players I played with. And this is the one that I, Las Vegas Invitational Pro, I mean, this is the regular tournament, the tour. But I played at the Desert Inn country club in TPC this summer, and Las Vegas country club, and these are the pros I played with.

AC: Who are the people in the picture?

IK: The first guy I played with was Hallet, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, Jim Hallet was the first guy, and the second guy I played with, Steve Pate, and the last day I had to play with, it was a qualifier, he was a qualifier, so I don't remember what his name was. But, I thought, well, nothing else to bring, so I'll bring that. [Laughs] But that was the front page in this newspaper here in town that I got to go play in that. So I was kind of happy about that.

AC: You also have this other magazine here?

IK: Well, this is, my daughter made this, but it's our fiftieth anniversary, and she just wrote a bunch of stuff in here about us. I just brought along this to show my family, this is my family, my kids is all.

AC: That's great.

IK: This is Randy's family, Randy and his wife Janie and Mimi, and that's myself and Grandma. And that's Brady, the oldest one. And this is the other family, is Brady's right here, and that's me, and that's his son Ethan, this is Alex, and this is Megan. This is Grandma, and this is his wife Jeanette. And this is my... this is all the kids, my grandkids that are here, that came, and we took pictures together. This is my daughter, Ellen Joyce, and her son, Kevin. This is my wife, me, and her husband Tom Masterson.

AC: And she's in Los Angeles?

IK: Yes. She works at a golf course. She's a golf course tournament coordinator at Payute. Do you golf?

AC: No.

IK: Well, I was going to say, if you do, just play at Payute. [Laughs] But she's been, a lot of those golf courses, she was at the Anthem over there, and she was at Legacy, and she was at Wild Horse. She worked at all those places, and she finally ended up at [inaudible] and pretty good deal over there. So she draws a lot of people from California, Nihonjin clubs, you know. She likes her work.

AC: Oh, you also have an article here. What's that?

IK: Well, I told you when we started this, they had this written in the Argus, and it's just a story just like I'm telling you right now.

AC: So this is the story of you starting over again after the internment camp?

IK: Yes. It's one of those farm enclosures that they have at the newspaper.

AC: So we've talked about an awful lot of things, you've had a pretty fascinating life. Is there anything that I haven't asked you that you would like to go and talk about?

IK: Not really, I think I'm done.

AC: Anything that you want to add to or revisit that we have talked about, you want to add a little bit more to?

IK: Well, if you haven't been to the Four Rivers Cultural Center here, I wish you'd go see it. I mean, that was one of the best things that happened in this town. Because we have our golf tournaments here, Northwest, and every five years we have a golf tournament here with all the people from Canada to Seattle, Portland, and Spokane, they come here and play in a tournament. But we have to place to assemble afterwards for our awards dinner and things. Now we do. And we have our church conventions every seven years, and we didn't have no place to hold that, and now we do. So it's been a great asset to us.

AC: I think I might have some time tomorrow afternoon maybe to go. One last thing. Looking back over all of your experiences your entire life, what advice would you have to give to your grandchildren and great-grandchildren?

IK: Well, living is tough, but if you work hard, you can -- I've told this to them -- but if you work hard at anything you want to do, you'll make it, is what I say. I don't know. [Laughs] But if you goof off and let the world go by, well, you ain't gonna get nowhere. I'm done.

AC: Thank you so very much for taking the time to speak with us.

IK: No problem.

AC: We really appreciate it.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.