<Begin Segment 8>

TI: So, Kenji, when I listen to the story about living in the boxcar, so your father was the foreman, this was during the Depression, and you were saving, the family was saving money by living in a boxcar. So it seemed like, rather than being poor, your parents were just very frugal and practical rather than not really having resources, because they probably could have bought a few more things if they chose to.

KO: Yeah. Actually, I don't want to say my father could have been rich, but one of the things that happened in his life was that as a person of stature in the community, there would be people who came to him and said, "I'm planning to start a business, but I need to go to the bank and get a loan. Would you co-sign, could I use your name and have you co-sign the loan?" And my father did that for four or five different people, and was left holding the bag. So anyhow...

TI: So let me make sure I understand. So "left holding the bag," so these, quote, "partners" essentially defaulted on the loan and made your father responsible for them?

KO: That's right.

TI: And do you know how difficult that was for the family? Did that kind of wipe out family when these things happened? Or maybe "wipe out" isn't the right word, but really depleted, maybe, the family savings?

KO: That's the way, I think that's the way it was, that the money that he had in the bank was paid, used to pay off someone else's loans default. But it was the Depression time and we were frugal. The word frugal really means a lot to me, and brings up memories of a lot of stories. But my mother would take us kids at the beginning of the school year for back to school clothes shopping. We would buy new trousers and new shirts and new sweaters, but she always bought it a size or two bigger because she says, "By the time June comes, it'll fit you." [Laughs] So we'd buy these trousers and we'd roll up the cuff or something, or she would stitch it a little bit shorter and then let the hem out as we grew during the year. Or if the trouser had a hole in it during the year, baseball season started, and we'd be sliding and tearing the knee, we'd have a patch on the knee. And then maybe another patch on top of the patch. And by the time September next came, we had had three patches on the knees. I used to feel with my "football uniform," I'd never skin my knee because I had so many patches on it. [Laughs]

TI: So you had to really take care of your clothes, because it had to last a whole year.

KO: It did. And my sister, Fumi, who, like I say, complained about, never wanted to be poor again. Of course, she's complained that the dress that Masako wore two years ago was passed on to Miyo (then) handed down to the third. She was the third owner of this dress, and you know, the colors were faded and all that. She said, "Gosh, I'm not going to do this, live this way."

TI: But that, yeah, I mean, a lot of families during the Depression era probably were doing the same thing.

KO: I'm sure.

TI: I mean, when you went to school... well, I guess you talked about it earlier. You felt, you mentioned that sort of sense that maybe others had more than you, so kind of embellished what you would have.

KO: Well, I remember especially the kids who came from town, they had access to a professional barber or something, because their hair, I thought their haircuts were always neat. My haircuts, my mother used to cut my hair with a hand clipper. Renso Enkoji's mother was a professional barber, and she had an electric clipper. And the boy always looked so neatly haircutted.

TI: So you noticed those things.

KO: I did notice those things. And sometimes the hand clipper and her pulling away from the head didn't quite coordinate, and she'd yank out a bunch of hair and I'd complain about the whole process. But yeah, it was mostly appearance, I guess. And then my mother was very frugal. When she made sandwiches for our school lunch, she would save the bread wrapper, and then wrap the sandwich in the bread wrapper. And I was noticing the kids from town, their mother was putting their sandwiches in nice waxed paper and maybe a relatively new paper bag or something, or they'd have lunchboxes and I didn't have that kind of stuff.

TI: And when you're young like that, you notice those things, it is hard. Going back to the boxcars, how about the relationship with the workers down there? Did you ever interact with the other men who were living in the boxcars?

KO: Not really. I didn't even know the others by name, except for Mr. Oka, because Oka kids, there were three of them. I don't know the names of the other Japanese workers.

TI: Or I'm curious, for holidays like Christmas, did the family celebrate that? And if so, how would they celebrate, like, Thanksgiving or Christmas in the boxcars?

KO: Well, we were a Buddhist family. So I don't really remember celebrating Christmas, we never saw a Christmas tree. Even birthdays, I don't really remember celebrating birthdays. New Year's time, because of my father's position, there were the other Japanese visitors coming to the house and dropping boxes of mikan. There weren't that many visitors, but I can remember getting boxes of mikan from Japanese visitors.

TI: Now would your family decorate the house for New Year's in any special way?

KO: No.

TI: Now, on New Year's, did your father also make the rounds? Did he kind of go and visit other people?

KO: He might have, but I knew we never did... actually, as far as traditional Japanese customs, we weren't that Japanesey. My mother... well, even she wasn't that Japanesey. My father, of course, had left Japan, saying goodbye, and he never talked about his own family. I didn't ever know anything about what his parents did, who his brothers and sisters were, or anything.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2014 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.