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HH: Okay. So you were, your parents were born in Hiroshima, and where were you born?

CK: I was born in Tacoma, Washington. But the thing was, my father was in San Francisco during the 1906 earthquake, and he escaped, and at that time, they lost everything. He had worked different areas and worked up in the state of Washington. And he went to Japan and came back with my mother. And they lived in Eatonville, which was a lumber mill in Washington right at the foot of Rainier mountain, they used to call Mount Rainier. So he was a railroad man and also a lumber man topping trees. Now this is where my brother and my sister were born, then from there, Dad moved to Tacoma, Washington, bought a hotel, and that's where I was born. And then two years later, he was, he bought a butcher shop, sold his hotel and bought a butcher shop.

HH: Was it still in Eatonville?

CK: No, this is Tacoma, Washington. We left Eatonville and went to Tacoma and bought a hotel.

HH: So would it be fair to say that your strongest recollection of Washington would be that of Tacoma?

CK: Yes.

HH: How would you describe the Tacoma of your childhood?

CK: It is a small city. At that time of evacuation, they would say it was around two hundred thousand. There was a Japanese community, but it was very, more or less a mixed community. We had a Japanese Buddhist church one block, next block was Methodist church, so Japanese Methodist United Church. Going the other way, there was a Baptist mission. But within this three or four block area, there were Chinese as well as Japanese, Caucasians, it's a mixed area. So when we played, it wasn't all strictly Japanese. But Japanese school was up about two hills up and two blocks over. So when you say the Japanese community, and like us, we attended Japanese school after regular school. So we did get together then and became, Japanese school became the center for the education.

HH: I see. So you had kind of a diverse community with a lot of, rich with many different kind of minority people.

CK: That's right.

HH: In the community. But you mentioned Japanese school, I take it that you attended Japanese school.

CK: Yes.

HH: How many years did you go?

CK: Almost through junior high.

HH: Are you still literate?

CK: What I remember, yes. [Laughs] The problem is, when you lose your parents and your relatives, whom you used to speak to in Japanese, and they pass away, you find yourself, you're not using it anymore, and this is how you forget.

HH: So far as school is concerned, you went through twelfth grade of Japanese school at Tacoma, what other schools did you attend in Tacoma?

CK: Other than the regular public school.

HH: So you went to regular public school and graduated.

CK: Yes.

HH: Any other schools in Tacoma?

CK: As far as my education, after high school. After high school, I graduated in '38. And worked the year, and then in '39, I went into nurse's training. My dad encouraged me, my mother thought otherwise, that it was beneath a Japanese status to go into nursing. But because he had been a patient, as a TB patient in Tacoma, outside of Tacoma, he felt that it wouldn't hurt, that it would be a good field to go into.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 1994 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.