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| Title | Ken Nagao Transcript Part 1 |
| Date | 2007-08-16 |
| Time Period | 2000-2009
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| Interviewee | Nagao, Ken |
| Interviewer | Uhlig, Elizabeth |
| Transcriber | Ockert, Ingrid |
| Subject | Japanese Americans
Racism
Pearl Harbor (Hawaii), Attack on, 1941
Relocation Camps
Japanese Americans--Evacuation and relocation, 1942-1945
Hunting
Human-animal communications
Architecture
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| Geographic Subject | Eugene (Ore.)
Hawaii
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| Original Collection | Japanese-American Association of Lane Co., OR, Oral History Collection
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| Restrictions | Permission to use must be obtained from the Oregon Multicultural Archives, OSU Special Collections & Archives Research Center. |
| File Name | ken_nagao_part1.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Full Text | Japanese-American Association of Lane County, Oregon - Oral History Collection Ken Nagao – Part 1 Date: August 16, 2007 Place: Ken Nagao's home Eugene, OR Length: 00:28:53 Interviewee: Ken Nagao Interviewer: Elizabeth Uhlig Transcriber: Ingrid Ockert Note: (sp?) means that words prior, mostly names, may be spelled incorrectly [00:00] [EU] This is an oral history with Ken Nagao. Today is April 16, 2007. We're at Ken's home in Eugene, Oregon. My name is Elizabeth Uhlig and I'll be interviewing Ken. Ken, you said you were a Sansei. So your grandparents then came over from Japan? [KN] Yes, that's right, um, the grandparents from both sides of the family moved to Hawaii. They're from Hiroshima-ken as well as Yamaguchi-ken. They're the prefectures in Japan, and I believe that they came over mainly for work, uh, although let's see. I don't know where in the family tier my grandparents came from whether they're the youngest or the middle or whatever. I suspect they were in the middle or younger of their brothers and sisters because, you know, normally in Japan it's only the oldest boy who inherits everything. [EU] Uh-huh [KN] My grandmother though said that, uh, that they moved to Hawaii in addition to looking for work, they were on the losing side, I think, they were Tokugawa side of the battle when the lords ruled you see, in the Mage Era and so, uh, because their side had lost, I believe they supported Tokugawa, and then they were forced to leave pretty much, besides looking for work, because they couldn't get work in Japan. [EU] What kind of work did their families do, do you know? [KN] Farming probably, the Nagao side actually had a, um, merchant shipping business in Japan. [EU] Uh-huh [KN] I'm sure small ships – little merchants probably, moving things back and forth. My mother's side, Shikada (sp?) side, I don't know what they really did, but you know their family crest shows two spools of thread, so I believe they were tailors, seamstresses, things like that. Whereas the Nagao side has the, they call it the "ken katabami" which are the wood sorrel family crest: between each leaf there is a long sword that shows some ranking in the Samurai order. When they got to Hawaii though, they did a lot of coffee picking, sugar cane work, I believe, on the big island. 2 [EU] Uh hm. Were they married before they came to Hawaii or after? [KN] No, actually my parents were born in Hawaii. [EU] Oh, I'm sorry. [KN] Because we're Sansei [EU] Oh and your grandparents [KN] My grandparents moved over. I don't know what – they both settled on the big island of Hawaii. The Shikadas, which is my mother's side, eventually built and ran a store near Kona somewhere and I've never found out where the store really was; I've seen photographs of it, but all those photographs were destroyed when… all of our archives were stored in a bay window storage area underneath the seats of the bay window. During a storm, it got all wet and ants, like carpenter ants or termites, got into them and created nothing but mush. So all the great photographs we had, you know, and we had tons of photographs and all that memorabilia is all gone. But then the Nagao side of the family, I remember, my father saying that they were settled in one of the camps, probably the camp near Aimee Yogi lives, Camp 13, he said. And he said it was on the top of the road in really poor soil. So because they couldn't do anything with the soil, they eventually decided to move elsewhere. That's when they moved to Honolulu. [04:18] [EU] And so your grandparents met in Hawaii? [KN] I don't know if they met. It was just my parents that met in Hawaii … somewhere… oh and it was a fixed marriage, arranged marriage [EU] Okay [KN] My mother said she didn't really want to get married to my dad. He was about ten years older than she was. [EU] Was she a picture bride? [KN] No, no. But that's the way that Japanese families in Hawaii did things back then. [EU] So they were married and moved to Honolulu? [KN] Honolulu. They may have been married in Honolulu, I'm not sure. [EU] And what did they then do in Honolulu? 3 [KN] My father worked for a dairy, as an ice cream packer and driver and did menial work really. My mother started her own business as a seamstress and she worked many many many years, long hours actually just doing aloha shirts. In her early years of working I'm sure she did dresses and other stuff, but then she got tied into aloha shirt manufacturing companies, a person who was actually the go-between between a lot of the big names, the very expensive aloha shirts in Hawaii. She, I think, sold them on a piece-by-piece basis. [EU] And what did your grandparents do then? [KN] The Shikada side grandparents are the ones that opened store in Kona. It was a little grocery store. I saw pictures of it and it was a nice country store. I don't know what my father's side grandparents did. [EU] So did they stay in Kona? [KN]Well, I never met my grandfather on my father's side; he passed away before I was born I'm sure. I knew my grandmother and she stayed with us. So that's how I learned a lot of Japanese because she spoke nothing but Japanese. My grandfather on my mother's side continued to run store in Kona and he visited us in Honolulu once in a great while. [EU] Did you also speak Japanese with him? Or was it English? [KN] I just … He spoke English, I spoke English to him. My parents really didn't, my mother especially didn't really want us to learn Japanese much originally because as we grew up she wanted us to learn to speak English very well and kind of be assimilated into society and so when we had a chance she actually got me and my sister just above me to transfer into what they call an English standard school system, which was a publically supported college prep school system. And the initial school that you went to, the elementary school, was a block away from our house so she transferred me from where I attended kindergarten when that other school opened up, and I remember taking an oral exam just to get into that school. [EU] And that was for…. [KN] For first grade, right. And luckily, I got in because I could say "Yes" and "No" rather than "Yeaaah" and "Naaah" because the other kids spoke Pidgin. My mom wanted us to not speak Pidgin. And for those that don't know, Pidgin is the language that's pretty common throughout Hawaii; it's a mixture of all the different ethnic languages, pulled together into something that everyone could understand. [08:18] [EU] Did you live in a Japanese community? 4 [KN] No we didn't. I know that some my relatives lived in communities where they're all ethnic related. I remember my uncle, the other Nagao and my dad, pooled their resources to have our home built. For a while, there were two families living there and then we eventually stayed there and the other Nagao family moved out and they built their own house too. The Nagao who was my uncle, younger than my dad, I guess my dad was the oldest, was a great auto mechanic and so he did really well financially. So he probably provided most of the money to build our home and they hired a Japanese carpenter, bought a piece of property, and built our home for $4000 dollars, I remember that price way back when, you know 1930s. [EU] So did you have, uh, many cousins and aunts and uncles living nearby? [KN] Uh, I know I had 54 first cousins on my mother's side and about three or about ten or so on my father's side… pretty big families. One of my aunts on my mother's side had fifteen children, thirteen survived. So I didn't know many of my cousins actually. A couple of the families stayed on the big island, and I really knew all those that were in Hawaii and Oahu where I grew up. And we got together every Sunday and it was fun. [EU] Huh-huh. How many brothers and sisters did you have? [KN] I have one brother and three sisters. I'm the youngest of five. [10:23] [KN] My brother passed away just recently. But the three sisters are still doing well in Hawaii. [EU] Are they all in Honolulu? [KN] They're all in Honolulu. So when we go back there next week, we always have a huge immediate family reunion, which sometimes fifty people or so into the house you see [laugh] [EU] Was it, uh, did your brothers and sisters, did they go to university also? I mean were they in this special school? [KN] No, my sister just above me, who was three years older than I, attended the same school system. She started in the fourth grade, that's when the school opened. She was in the fourth grade; I was in the first grade. And the other siblings, uh, were too old to get into that system, so they had to go the neighborhood schools. My brother, though, uh, is the one who kind of inspired me to get into architecture in a way, because when he was in the ninth grade, I was in the third grade and I would read all of his architecture books. He was taking mechanical drawings, architecture drawings in the ninth grade and I learned how to do a lot of the perspective drawings by reading his book back in the third grade. My favorite teacher, who was my third grade instructor, who was a "Miss" at that point, it was her first year in teaching, I just found that out; I always wanted to thank her for prodding all of us to do research on different careers. I did my first career study on architecture when I was in her class. Uh, we found her again, so we're going to get together with her next week when I go back for my high school reunion because several of 5 the classmates that I had in that grade school, knew that I had been looking for her, this Miss Tan, and I got a call from them last week saying "let's go visit her." Imagine these kids from grade school, first grade even [laughs]. They're all on this reunion committee. I had never gone back for a real high school reunion; I went back for the fiftieth birthday party, but that's it because those that were organizing it weren't my immediate friends. But this time all my friends are there organizing this fiftieth reunion [laughs] so it's gonna be a lot of fun. [EU] So you've kept in touch with so many of the, your schoolmates and family? [KN] Yeah, we don't like to drop friendships. [Pause] [13:33] [EU] How old were you, um, at Pearl Harbor, when the war broke out? [KN] Oh, I was old enough to remember. I was one year eleven months and about a week old. My birthday's on December 23rd and it happened December 7th so I actually remember that day because my brothers and sisters went to Sunday School that morning, it was a Sunday morning. They walked to Sunday School and at about eleven clock or so, when Sunday School should've been in session, they came running home because of the war breaking out. [EU] How did they learn about it at church then? [KN] They must've made an announcement at church that it happened. We were fairly close to Pearl Harbor. I don't remember the sirens though really and you know, homes in Hawaii weren't insulated, so we should've heard some of the sounds. I suppose we could've heard things that sounded like thunder. There was one bomb that fell a quarter mile above our house and I don't remember that. I only found that out on the fiftieth anniversary of the bombing when the newspaper had this big full edition, the entire paper was dedicated to Pearl Harbor, and they showed all the sites where bombs had fallen and I found one just up the hill from our house. [EU] Did your parents talk about that? [KN] They never talked about that. You know, they were really tight lipped about the war because here, when you're of the ethnicity of the folks that attack, you're in shock and they never wanted to really be Japanese, I don't think, during the war. I remember going to a May Day celebration at our elementary school and I was in about the first grade at the time when my mom was accosted by this other lady saying, "You're a Jap" and stuff, you know, so. That really opened my eyes. So that created some of the attitudes that I've had about being more American than others and this and that. [16:07] 6 [EU] Okay, so even in Hawaii, where there were so many Japanese Americans, there was still this prejudice? [KN] Oh yeah, sure, there was. A deep prejudice because you know I actually felt sorry for this lady because I suspected that maybe one of her sons probably maybe got killed on one of the ships perhaps. [EU] Growing up, were you aware of the camps, the fact that some of the Japanese Americans on the West coast were put into camps? [KN] Oh, it wasn't talked about very much. We knew that some of the folks in Hawaii were being sent to camps. [EU] From Hawaii? [KN] From Hawaii, only the very influential ones. Because over thirty percent of the population of Hawaii was Japanese at that time so they couldn't send all of us away. And I remember my grandmother burying stuff that she shouldn't have had, I think or something, or was afraid that things would get taken away from her. I don't think we ever dug those up again. Those things are probably still under the house somewhere. [EU] Umm, did any of your relatives volunteer for the army? [KN] Yeah, some of my cousins did. [EU] And for the hundredth battalion? [KN] For the 42nd [EU] For the 42nd okay. Did you hear stories from them about their war experiences? [KN] No, they never talked about it afterwards. You know it was shocking for them, traumatic, for losing so much of the group. [EU] So, your parents then put a lot of emphasis on education? [KN] They did, yeah. And um not really that much on education, but they wanted us to succeed in all aspects of life, more so my mother. She and I always had talks about things like that but hardly ever with my father. With my father it was outdoor activities, you know, just fishing and stuff like that so. We kids wanted to go swimming, he wanted us to go fishing with him instead. So we always talked him into going fishing places where we could actually swim while he fished. [EU] Is that how you developed your interest in hunting and outdoor? 7 [KN] Well, I never supported hunting, okay. I actually love all kinds of animals, all right. So I really cringed at going hunting. And in Hawaii, I never did. It was only when I came to Oregon that one of our roommates in the house…there were five of us Hawaiians living in a house right on campus, on Agate and Franklin Blvd, two houses away from the Smith's [laughs] [EU] From Smith's Family Bookstore? [KN] And um, at times we had seven people there. One of our roommates, who actually had a family that lives here in Eugene, he had dropped out of Oregon State and he liked to pals around with the Hawaiian folks at Oregon State so we all met him so he came down with other Oregon State students to our luau. And later when he dropped out of school, he always hung around with us and convinced us to go duck hunting with him. The first couple of experiences, I would pretend that I was shooting at the ducks, but missing on purpose, you know [laughs] [EU] Did you ever go hunting for deer or other animals? [KN] I did too, yes, and after gun toting duck hunting, I thought, you know, maybe I should do stuff that the pioneers did so I got involved in deer hunting and became too successful at it actually. And I knew that my mom never wanted me to hunt deer because her last name is actually Shikada – Deer Village- "da" means actually rice paddy [laughs]. [21:00] [KN] I wonder if that's the reason why these deer come to me when I talk to them. And they do come and I've had many experiences talking to deer and have them come to me and I feed them. When I'm hiking out there on Skyline trail or wherever. One time, Irene and I had, was entertaining our accountant's family. The accountant's wife is another neighbor of Irene's from Kukuihaele, Hawaii and this is another neighbor so like family, we use them as our accountants. We took them to Diamond Lake and did little sun, and Irene and I were were riding in the car, I wanted to show them where the fish actually was. I saw two deer along the road, so I stopped, rolled the window down, and started talking to them and they came up to the window and we fed them potato chips. Pretty soon, we had a jam of cars, you know the gravel road, they were three or four cars going each direction stopped there watching me feed a deer. So finally, I had to get out off the car and chase the deer off the road so that the cars could go by [laughs]. And it was that same spot that a few weeks before, that I started talking to a deer and it came up to me until somebody else came up from behind me so the dear ran away. So I thought maybe that it was the same deer perhaps [EU] Does that happen with other animals or mainly deer because? [KN] Deer come to me on the Skyline Trail also birds, although I shoot and ducks and such, when I sit in the backyard here and whistle and listen to ukulele, I've had crows spiral in and fly on these tree around me and all these little birds would come and sit right on the plants along the deck, so there must be something [laughs] 8 [EU] Did your mother, did other family talk to deer or had that? [KN] They may have perhaps, I don't know. She like the deer, when she went to Japan… [They both laugh] [KN] Mysterious. [EU] Why, how did you decided to come to Oregon? [KN] Oh when I got into architecture school in Hawaii, the University of Hawaii, it was only a pre-architecture program, two years, so I knew that I had to transfer out. We couldn't afford, you know, to pay for my education and I never applied for scholarships, and so I kind of worked my way through. I didn't know if I would continue on, but I was accepted to Oregon. And I chose Oregon, for cost, for one thing, because they were giving Hawaii students reciprocity in terms of only paying in-state tuition. And that was only $75 a term. Hawaii, reciprocated in that too, and for Oregon Students, and for Alaskan Students too, because we were just becoming states, they could go to Hawaii for in-state tuition too. So luckily, both Irene and I were able to take advantage of that. [EU] And you knew then that since you were in third grade that you were going to go into architecture. [KN] That's right. I didn't know for sure, but I really wanted it. [EU] So you came to Oregon when you were a Junior? [KN] Yeah, Junior, Senior, and fifth year; it was a five year program. [EU] Where did you live again? You said you had a house? [KN] Oh see what's it called, the business administration building, right on the corner of Agate and Franklin blvd , the red brick building, [EU] Okay, Oregon Hall. [KN] That's right Oregon Hall, our house is right there, right next to the driveway into the University's parking lot, so we could sleep in and run to class. [EU] Who were your roommates then? Did you room with other people from Hawaii? [KN] Howard Ashiro (sp?), is from Hilo, he was a music major, that's what got me more into music here. Thomas Orion (sp?), he became a partner of mine for a while in architecture. [EU] Is he the … works out at LCC? 9 [KN] Yeah. So he was a classmate of mine at the University of Hawaii and we talked about becoming partners back then. And then, he kind of flunked out of architecture, and got into something else and transferred over here and couldn't get into architecture, went into interiors, because he couldn't pass physics and some other things you know. But eventually with enough experience in an architect's office he was able to take the test, you can't do it today, you need an accredited degree in architecture. But, there was a guy from Winchester bay, Jerry/Gary Shin (sp?), that had a service station in Winchester bay, and he loved to hunt too. He was one of the guys that hunted the best, and hunted with us also, Tom did too, only because this friend of mine, Larry Gangle, who started us all on hunting, put up this score sheet in the back of the house keeping track of the different ducks and the different species that each person shot you see, so he made it into a competition. And Gary Kogimora (sp?) another roommate and let's see…that was it. [EU] Did you live together? I mean, does the affinity with other people from Hawaii? [KN] Well, the first year I moved out of the dorm, I stayed by myself by an apartment where Sacred Heart's Parking structure is right now. Then these guys found a house, started renting it, and so they invited me there. [EU] And you lived next door, a couple of doors down from the Smith's. [KN] Uh huh, another Hawaii students, Harvey Yashi (sp?), lived between the two of us. So we always had big parties, every weekend. [EU] So you knew Nancy Smith? [KN She was little, was a little girl when we lived there, so I knew Lisa Smith [laughs] [EU] I'm going to stop here, okay. [end 28:53] |
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