Akiko Kurokawa and Fujiko Nonaka | Interview 1 | August 7, 2014

FUKUMOTO: Okay, now we're recording.

FUKUMOTO: Okay, today is August 7, 2014, and we're in Hanapepe, Kauai with Miss Akiko Kurokawa and Miss Fujiko Nonaka. We're just going to start at the beginning of your full name, where you were born, and when you were born. Either one--you want to go ahead and start? Your full name, where you were born, and when you were born?

NONAKA: Oh, Fujiko Nonaka. I was born January 17, 1924 in Wahiawa on the island Kauai.

KUROKAWA: My name is Akiko Kurokawa. I was born November 6, 1919. I was born in Kalaheo, Kauai.

FUKUMOTO: So what you remember, growing up on Kauai as a young girl--what kind 00:01:00of things do you remember growing up? Like what did it look like? What kinds of things did you do? How many people you had in your family--that kind of stuff, anything that comes to your mind when you think about your childhood.

NONAKA: We had only four--four in our family. I'm the second--the oldest one is sister, and I am the second, and I had a brother and a sister. Just four in our family. And the only thing I know is I had to work without going to school.

FUKUMOTO: And can you tell us a little bit about what kind of work and where you worked?

NONAKA: Yeah, in the plantation.

FUKUMOTO: And that was at McBryde Plantation?

NONAKA: Yeah, uh-huh.

FUKUMOTO: And your whole family worked there, yeah?

NONAKA: Well, yeah.

FUKUMOTO: Do you remember what your parents did in the plantation?

NONAKA: Yes, they were just labor, hapaiko and all that.

FUKUMOTO: And you remember living in the camp?

NONAKA: Yeah, Camp Two.

FUKUMOTO: Do you remember what number? Camp Two. Okay.

NONAKA: Yeah, Stable Camp.

FUKUMOTO: Stable Camp Two.

NONAKA: Yeah, they had a stable in the back.

FUKUMOTO: Oh!

NONAKA: And we had to go and pick the beans, you know, the kiawe beans?

FUKUMOTO: Yeah.

NONAKA: To sell five cents a bag--big bag like this! [demonstrating size] Twenty-five cents, to make our lunch money.

FUKUMOTO: Right. And your lunch--so what kind of lunch did you eat?

Narrator: School lunch

FUKUMOTO: School lunch. Was it good?

NONAKA: But most of the time our parents make rice ball.

FUKUMOTO: Yeah, musubi.

NONAKA: Musubi, with dried shrimp or something--nothing good, not sausage. We can't afford meat or sausage and stuff like that.

FUKUMOTO: But musubi is still good though! [laughing]

NONAKA: Musubi and ume. [laughter] In those days our lunch was only five cents!

FUKUMOTO: Oh!

NONAKA: But yet still then they couldn't afford the food, you know?

FUKUMOTO: Do you remember what your camp looked like? Was it pretty much like dirt--

NONAKA: Yeah! It's right on the highway, where you go this way to the new mill. You know coffee, you know by the coffee--

FUKUMOTO: Yeah, the Kauai Coffee--

NONAKA: Yeah, yeah. Right on the highway, on the right side, where you go this way. It's all coffee now. They all planted coffee there.

FUKUMOTO: Right, because it was sugarcane. Now it's a coffee plantation. But you had a view of the ocean, right?

NONAKA: Yeah, well--not too much.

FUKUMOTO: Not too much, because of working a lot. Did you enjoy your work? Or was it really hard?

NONAKA: Hard! It was hard.

FUKUMOTO: Do you remember how early you had to wake up to do your work?

FUKUMOTO: Yeah, five o'clock in the morning and worked till late in the afternoon, after three o'clock. More than eight hours.

FUKUMOTO: In the heat?

NONAKA: Yeah.

FUKUMOTO: Really hot, because the site is so hot. Wow.

NONAKA: Yes. We had to work really hard. I didn't like.

FUKUMOTO: No, I don't--I don't know if I would too. [laughing] I would probably cry if I had to do that work. [laughter] Oh, thank you.

NONAKA: But just to help the family.

FUKUMOTO: Right, that's what you had to do.

NONAKA: Just to survive.

FUKUMOTO: Exactly, right. And everybody had to do that, right?

NONAKA: Right, yeah.

FUKUMOTO: Okay. Miss Kurokawa--a little bit about your family?

KUROKAWA: We had nine in the family. So since I was a girl they couldn't afford to send me to high school. So I had to go to work as a maid. Then when I graduated I worked as a maid for my eighth-grade teacher. That was my work. But I learned a lot of things from her, because the Portuguese made good bread.

FUKUMOTO: Yeah! Oh, so you learned how to make bread from her!

KUROKAWA: Mm-hmm. I know. Anyway, since I couldn't go to high school at that 00:05:00time, when I retired--I was already married--I decided to get my high school diploma. I got my high school diploma when I was seventy-two years old.

FUKUMOTO: Yeah! That's terrific.

KUROKAWA: When we were young--can you imagine nine children? Oh--actually I was born in Kalaheo, so just recently I wanted to go and see where I was born, and I got to see the place and I could remember a lot of things. Yeah.

DUNHAM: What did you remember?

FUKUMOTO: Yeah, what kind of things do you remember? Trees or places? People's farms? [a heavy wind is blowing outside]

KUROKAWA: Well, we used to have our kitchen--you know they used to get--with a dirt floor area and a stove. And then outside we used to have our laundry, we handled our laundry and stuff. Those are the things I remembered. So when I saw the place I could picture that thing, you know? But--

FUKUMOTO: Were those good memories for you?

KUROKAWA: Hmm?

FUKUMOTO: [more loudly] Were those good memories for you?

KUROKAWA: Yeah, it was. [a bird clucks in the background] But when I was ten years old my father--actually at the time he contracted property from the--I don't know, the Hirano family used to have a lot of land. He leased some of the 00:07:00land; he used to plant pineapple. But when I was ten years old he decided he wants to go back to Okinawa and plant his own pineapple. So he brought his plow and everything and we all--let me see now, how many of us--[laughing]. We were there for six months, and my youngest brother was one year old, so he was always getting sick because of the food and stuff. So my older brother said we shouldn't stay. This is no future for them. So we all came back that same year, six months later. And that's when my father bought this property in Kalaheo, twenty acres, right below Kukuilono Park, and he raised pineapple. And the very 00:08:00first year he planted twenty acres. By the time they harvested it, Kauai Pineapple Company--they used to deal with, Kauai Pine[apple] they used to can the fruits. Those were Depression years, eh? So they said they were going to take only one-third of the crop that he had planted. Oh, and that was terrible. So we had to help him go and sell pineapple to the rich haole people, you know?

FUKUMOTO: Ooh, that must have been hard, yeah?

KUROKAWA: Yeah.

DUNHAM: How did you sell? Did you go door to door? Or did you have a stand?

KUROKAWA: No, you had to go door to door.

DUNHAM: Oh. Did you do that yourself?

KUROKAWA: Not myself.

DUNHAM: Okay, no. Other family? Yeah.

KUROKAWA: My brothers and sisters. Not other family. Because we were individual farmers at that time. But later years they decided to work together. They bought all the equipment together and worked together. So--they did well.

FUKUMOTO: Oh, good.

DUNHAM: Were those all Japanese families?

KUROKAWA: Yeah.

DUNHAM: Could I ask about when you visited Okinawa, what you remember about that time when you were there?

KUROKAWA: Oh yeah, I was ten years old! And you know, those days when we were in the third grade that's when we can go to Japanese school. So when I went to Okinawa--actually I was fifth grade over here, but I had to go to third grade over there. And that's where I learned my times table. And till today it's like 00:10:00a rhyme, the times table. They're really advanced, you know?

FUKUMOTO: So that was a real good thing, yeah?

KUROKAWA: Yeah, so when I came back, six months later, I came the top student in the math class!

FUKUMOTO: Wow! [laughing]

KUROKAWA: Because I knew my times table, and they were learning times table at that time.

DUNHAM: What do you remember about the food when you were in Okinawa? Did you like the food there? I know your brother got sick, but how was it for you?

KUROKAWA: Oh, they tried to give us the best foods! Because their main food is sweet potatoes, right? And then they had fish and maybe pork, yeah.

FUKUMOTO: That sounds ono. That sounds good. [laughing] Was food at least 00:11:00similar from home--from Kauai to Okinawa? Did you feel that there is some similarities? Like a lot of people say Okinawa reminds them of Kauai. Is that true, or no?

KUROKAWA: Well, the main--we eat rice over here, our main staple food. But over there it is sweet potato. And once in a while you get rice, because rice was hard to--it's expensive! [laughing] Yeah. But like I said, life was hard for me because I was the oldest girl. And then my brother, the one right above me, then he left. [begins to cry] Then he was inducted in the army in October of 1941.

FUKUMOTO: Nineteen forty-one, right.

KUROKAWA: Just before the war.

FUKUMOTO: Two months before the war.

KUROKAWA: Just before the war, just before the war. Then he served. He served in the army from the very beginning to the end. This was not Japan--they wouldn't send them to Japan. [laughing]

FUKUMOTO: But to Europe, yeah.

KUROKAWA: So he was there in Europe, from the beginning to the very end, but he had to--he lost his life in the Lost Battalion. [crying]

FUKUMOTO: So that must have been really hard for your family, right?

KUROKAWA: I can't imagine how my mother felt.

FUKUMOTO: That's yeah, really, really hard, I can imagine, too.

DUNHAM: What was your brother's name?

KUROKAWA: James Koichi Uejo. In fact, I wrote something down here.

FUKUMOTO: Great.

KUROKAWA: Do you want to read it?

FUKUMOTO: Yeah, definitely.

KUROKAWA: This is about my brother.

FUKUMOTO: Oh, very nice.

DUNHAM: Thank you. We'll look at that later, because I know your time is short.

KUROKAWA: Yeah, I'm finished.

DUNHAM: Your time is short, yeah. [laughter] And we're getting ready for a big storm here and I know you're getting ready to go to Japan, you two, yes? Well, what--maybe we'll go back and--what do you remember about after Pearl Harbor was attacked? How did you first hear of it and what changes happened here on Kauai after that?

NONAKA: Well, everything changed, yeah, in those days. We had to stay in a blackout and couldn't go no place. I kind of forgot. And a lot of soldiers.

DUNHAM: [to Akiko Kurokawa] Would you like a tissue?

KUROKAWA: Oh yeah.

DUNHAM: I've got some here.

FUKUMOTO: Scary time.

NONAKA: Yeah, a scary time. It was more scary.

FUKUMOTO: But you still worked on the plantation during that time?

NONAKA: No, I was working at the restaurant.

FUKUMOTO: Oh yeah, right, right!

NONAKA: At sixteen I started working at the restaurant.

FUKUMOTO: And did you interact with a lot of solders during that time?

NONAKA: Yeah, they used to come to eat at the restaurant.

FUKUMOTO: So what was that like, with all the soldiers coming to Hawaii?

NONAKA: Oh, it was kind of scary.

FUKUMOTO: Yeah, it's such a small island, right? Everybody knows everybody, and all of a sudden soldiers are coming from all around the country. Did they treat you well?

NONAKA: Well, yeah. They didn't harm us. They were very nice.

FUKUMOTO: But you guys helped a lot of soldiers, right? Did they come around and you had to help feed them? Or anything like that?

NONAKA: Yeah, uh-huh, we took care of a guy from Italy I think it was. My brother got--was a friend with him and brought him home. And we had rabbit those days. We killed a rabbit and we feed him.

FUKUMOTO: Did he enjoy, do you remember if he enjoyed the food?

NONAKA: Yeah, they enjoyed, he enjoyed.

DUNHAM: What other changes were happening during the war years though, under martial law? The barbed wire was around the island. Did you have families who helped--I know they had the Kauai volunteer group involved in other aspects of that. Or too busy working?

NONAKA: Well, yeah. I cannot remember too well. But anyway--it was really different when the war started.

DUNHAM: Did you have the bomb shelter at your place?

NONAKA: Yeah, we had to go in the bomb shelter.

DUNHAM: Can you describe it? What was it like?

NONAKA: Under the house a little shelter. [Kurokawa laughing] Yeah. No, we had the siren blow and then we had to go in there.

FUKUMOTO: And did you have to walk around with your gas mask?

NONAKA: Gas mask, yeah. We all had to have.

FUKUMOTO: But never had to really use it though, right?

NONAKA: No, no, no, no.

FUKUMOTO: It must have been heavy though. Was it heavy?

NONAKA: Oh yeah.

FUKUMOTO: Yeah.

DUNHAM: And so during the war you were working at the restaurant?

NONAKA: Yeah.

FUKUMOTO: As a waitress?

NONAKA: Yes.

FUKUMOTO: Oh, that's hard work too, huh? But probably nothing compared to working at the plantation.

NONAKA: Oh no. That was better. [everyone laughing] Yeah.

DUNHAM: Aside from those who were drafted in the military and joining the military, were any folks leaving for Oahu, for other jobs, for civil defense 00:17:00jobs or that type of thing, did you know about? No.

NONAKA: No.

FUKUMOTO: People just leaving to the islands or other places?

NONAKA: Yeah.

DUNHAM: Yeah, this includes much of that. Okay.

FUKUMOTO: Miss Kurokawa, what do you remember about December 7, 1941? How did you get the news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor?

KUROKAWA: Actually, I was in Oahu at that time, and I was working at this bakery in Palama. You know where Palama is? It's quite a distance. And I actually saw this black--at that time I thought they were black birds. I didn't think anything of it, until the president came on the radio and told us that we were at war, that we were bombed--I worked it out.

DUNHAM: Yeah, yeah. But if you could describe, can you describe that, though, for the recording? What you remember of that when you heard the president come on the radio?

FUKUMOTO: Yeah, what did you think?

KUROKAWA: Oh, that was scary! That was really scary. But we were busy, because my brother was already inducted in October, yeah? So as soon as he was called for active duty, when he was assigned to Port Allen here to watch over the Chevron station. He had to bring his clothes to be washed, so we were busy getting his things ready so he can move on, eh? And I understand he was in Salt Pond. He was stationed there for--and then after that they went to the mainland, 00:19:00training. And then they were riding this bus and the American people there were treating them like enemies, you know?

DUNHAM: That must have been really hard.

KUROKAWA: But like I wrote down, he fought the war from the very beginning to the very end and he lost his life with the Lost Battalion. [voice breaking]

FUKUMOTO: How old was your brother?

KUROKAWA: How old--how old was he? [laughing]

FUKUMOTO: A few years older than you, right?

KUROKAWA: He was two years older.

FUKUMOTO: Did you think that Japan would actually come back and invade? Were you guys ever afraid of that? The Japanese coming back and bombing more or taking over? Or by that time were you guys--felt safe because of the military? You guys 00:20:00felt safe here?

NONAKA: Yeah, and I don't think Japan will ever come again. I don't think so.

FUKUMOTO: Was it hard? Did you feel--were you--kind of have shame being Japanese at that time? Or were you still proud of being Japanese afterward? [Nonaka and Kurokawa laughing] How did you handle--because I'm curious, right? Because I'm Japanese and I'm thinking--

NONAKA: Well, we are American citizens.

FUKUMOTO: Yeah.

NONAKA: And of course we are Japanese, but we didn't feel too bad about--I don't know how come they had to come and bomb. That we cannot understand. But we are American citizens, so I don't know. The only thing we Japanese saw, we kind of felt shame at first.

FUKUMOTO: Right, or if people said anything to you, called you names?

NONAKA: Yeah, they called us Japs.

FUKUMOTO: Called you Japs, yeah. But no violence, right? People didn't come and do things to your house.

NONAKA: No, no.

FUKUMOTO: Because in the mainland there were signs--Japs Stay Out. This is a White Place.

NONAKA: Yeah, right, yes.

FUKUMOTO: Get out of the--can't go to the store, can't go to the restaurant. But here because, I guess, there are a lot of Japanese, I guess that was kind of hard to do that, right?

DUNHAM: But when you were called that, who called you those names? Was that soldiers or people of other--

NONAKA: No, no. Not soldiers.

DUNHAM: Okay, so it was other ethnic groups here?

NONAKA: Right, not Japanese kind--like Portuguese, Filipinos.

KUROKAWA: The Filipino people were bigshots with this.

NONAKA: The Japanese, yeah.

DUNHAM: Okay. Opportunity.

FUKUMOTO: They had jobs that--

KUROKAWA: They were camp police and they would go into people's--well, Japanese homes, actually, to check to see if there's any--

FUKUMOTO: Japanese things or anything--

KUROKAWA: Yeah.

FUKUMOTO: Did you guys have to get rid of any of your Japanese--anything Japanese? Did you bury it?

NONAKA: Yeah, yeah.

FUKUMOTO: Some people say they burnt it or buried it. Did you guys--

KUROKAWA: Most people burnt it, I guess.

DUNHAM: How about for your families, do you know? Did your parents burn or hide materials? Do you know?

FUKUMOTO: Like whether it's Japanese books? Or some people said even the emperor. Some people had a picture of the emperor.

NONAKA: Yeah, yeah. They've got pictures.

KUROKAWA: Yeah, yeah.

NONAKA: The emperor picture we had to get rid of them.

KUROKAWA: That would be--

FUKUMOTO: So that was the first thing people got rid of probably, yeah.

DUNHAM: Did you guys grow up as Buddhists? Going to temple?

NONAKA: Yeah, I was. My mom and dad was really church--

DUNHAM: What happened to the temple during the war?

NONAKA: Oh, the priests was all gone. They took all of them away.

KUROKAWA: They were all relocated.

NONAKA: To the concentration camp.

FUKUMOTO: That's scary, right? That they were picking up very--they knew who to pick up and who--

NONAKA: Yeah. We didn't have no priests at the church. They were all pulled away.

FUKUMOTO: That's sad.

DUNHAM: Did you have any idea where they were taken?

NONAKA: I don't know where. Concentration camp, I think.

DUNHAM: Right, right. And did you also hear about , on the mainland, the executive order when all of the Japanese Americans were taken to camps?

NONAKA: Yeah.

DUNHAM: What did you hear at that time?

NONAKA: I don't know.

DUNHAM: Do you remember? No, okay.

KUROKAWA: Well, that's about all.

DUNHAM: Just that they were taken away.

KUROKAWA: That's what they told me.

FUKUMOTO: Right, like oh wow. They're all taken away.

DUNHAM: But it must have been very upsetting.

KUROKAWA: Yeah, because if they owned a business, they took over the business and they had to be sent to a concentration camp here.

FUKUMOTO: Oh yeah. So you know things were closed, or a lot of Japanese schools were closed during that time. Churches were closed, but they all reopened after the war pretty much?

NONAKA: Yeah.

FUKUMOTO: The Japanese schools opened up and the--

NONAKA: But not as much as before.

FUKUMOTO: And at that time do you think a lot of Japanese stopped speaking Japanese and tried to learn more English? Do you remember that?

NONAKA: Yes, because our children--yeah, our children didn't have much Japanese school education because of that. And we speak more English at home, so they didn't--so until the nisei--like our--my mom and dad came from Japan and they couldn't speak English, so only they spoke in Japanese. And we went to more Japanese language, so we were fortunate that we can speak Japanese fluently.

FUKUMOTO: Oh, I wish I spoke Japanese, but my generation--

NONAKA: Like you, young, yes.

KUROKAWA: Oh.

FUKUMOTO: And then growing up on the mainland. So what did you do? Okay, so after the war--because you were in Honolulu, you were in Oahu, so when did you come back to Kauai?

KUROKAWA: I came back right away. It was scary to stay away from home!

FUKUMOTO: So that was no problem for you to just leave Oahu and come back to Kauai?

KUROKAWA: Well, we had the hardest time to get to the plane. We were on the bottom of the list. [laughing]

FUKUMOTO: Right.

DUNHAM: Oh, so how did you finally get out?

KUROKAWA: Well, I guess it took about a month. In those days we used to have the 00:26:00airfield in Mana. Not in Lihue, it was Mana.

FUKUMOTO: So you must have been happy to at least be back with your family.

KUROKAWA: Mm-hmm.

DUNHAM: And who were you traveling with? You said we. Were you with another family member?

FUKUMOTO: Or friends?

DUNHAM: Who were you traveling with from Oahu?

KUROKAWA: Traveling--I came back by myself.

DUNHAM: Oh, you were by yourself. Okay. So when you said, "We were at the bottom of the list," you meant Japanese Americans? Yeah, had a harder time.

KUROKAWA: Yeah. We would stand in line and then--[making a noise]. They would take--

DUNHAM: They would pass you over?

KUROKAWA: They would take the other people first and then you know--

DUNHAM: Did you have to try many times then, to--

KUROKAWA: Yeah.

DUNHAM: Did you have any way of communicating with your family, at the time, on Kauai?

KUROKAWA: Well, the only thing was write a letter. [laughing]

DUNHAM: Yeah, which takes a while, yeah.

FUKUMOTO: So what did you do when you came back home to Kauai?

KUROKAWA: When I came back home?

FUKUMOTO: Yeah.

KUROKAWA: Well, actually at that point I was--I was going with my husband at that time, so I wanted to come back. But my mother sent me to Honolulu. So I was happy to be back! [laughter]

FUKUMOTO: How did you meet your husband?

KUROKAWA: Oh, I used to work at the sweet shop. I mean, you know, no education. I met him at the sweet shop. And I thought he was a rich man, because he had--in 1941 he had a '39 Studebaker. [laughter]

FUKUMOTO: So you said wow, huh?

KUROKAWA: Whoa--I thought he was rich! [laughter]

DUNHAM: Was he Okinawan?

KUROKAWA: No, that's why my parents didn't agree to our marriage, yeah.

DUNHAM: So was that uncommon for an Okinawan and a Japanese?

KUROKAWA: Well, in those days it was hard to get married, intermarried, yeah.

FUKUMOTO: But it was love. [laughter]

KUROKAWA: Yeah.

FUKUMOTO: Did they eventually accept him though? Through time they realized, right?

KUROKAWA: Yeah, yeah. And after I had my first child he was inducted in the army, and then we were separated again for two years.

FUKUMOTO: Oh, wow! So that must have been really hard too.

KUROKAWA: Then when he came back--actually he used to work for the territory. It wasn't a state yet. So he had a good job. But then you know how things work out. Somebody took over, and they give you a bad time to go back to your job. So we finally decided to open up a service station/repair shop business, 1948. So I had to go to business school to learn some business, learn some business knowledge, because I had to make payroll and, you know, stuff like that.

FUKUMOTO: So where was this repair shop?

KUROKAWA: It's still in Halapepe.

FUKUMOTO: Oh!

DUNHAM: Oh yeah? Did you run it a long time then?

KUROKAWA: Oh yes, until I retired. Like I said, I retired in--

DUNHAM: And you went back to school.

KUROKAWA: I went back to school. I was seventy already.

DUNHAM: Wow! It was a good business then.

KUROKAWA: It was hard Depression years! And those days there's a charge, and then when you charge you have to go collect.

FUKUMOTO: Oh!

DUNHAM: Oh!

KUROKAWA: Which was hard. In fact, I had to go to Honolulu to collect from this company that used to charge at our place.

FUKUMOTO: You had to fly over there to get it directly from them? Oh my--

KUROKAWA: Well, he used to have people working here, and I had to go--and do you know, I went through this front door. She was a Chinese lady. I went to the front door to collect now. She went back through the back door, but I never went back.

FUKUMOTO: So she knew you were there and she just took off and ran from you? [laughing] Did that happen to you a lot when you had to go collect?

KUROKAWA: No, I just went for two people, and the other lady that promised me she was going to pay me--I don't know where her--she was working at the time. They had a restaurant. It was on King Street I think. So I'm riding this bus, King Street, and she said, "I'm going to be on King Street." And she's right by her business place like this. [demonstrating] So I went down from the bus and I went and I collected the money. So I came back with some money. [laughter]

FUKUMOTO: Oh, that sounds really hard! What's the name of the repair shop?

KUROKAWA: It used to be Kats' Repair. Now it's Denny's Repair and Service. And my son is running the place. My oldest son actually went to mechanic school and he was nice enough to come back and work for us.

DUNHAM: When you were both young girls I know it was very hard. It was the Depression and you had hard work, not making much money. Did you have any ideas or dreams of what you might want to be or do when you grew up?

NONAKA: [laughing] No.

DUNHAM: Was there any--

FUKUMOTO: No time for that, huh?

NONAKA: Yeah.

DUNHAM: It was hard. Well, you've both persevered and had long, interesting lives. I wanted to ask--did you marry as well? When and how did you meet your husband?

NONAKA: I don't know! [laughing] I forget.

DUNHAM: Was it during the war? Or later?

NONAKA: No, what time or what--I don't know. I forgot.

DUNHAM: He was local from Kauai?

NONAKA: Yeah, he was a farmer.

DUNHAM: And did you have--

FUKUMOTO: Do you have kids too?

NONAKA: I did, yeah. I had five kids.

FUKUMOTO: Five, wow!

NONAKA: And I didn't have education, so I gave them all education. I sent all of them to college.

FUKUMOTO: Wow!

DUNHAM: That's great!

NONAKA: I didn't have the education, so I wanted my children to have education. So we struggled and we sent them to school, all to college, yeah.

FUKUMOTO: So you guys are all--what grandparents? Or great-grandparents now too, 00:34:00right, by this time?

NONAKA: Yes, yes. I have eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

FUKUMOTO: Wow! Are they all over? Or are they here on the island?

NONAKA: Yeah, all in Honolulu and Kauai.

FUKUMOTO: Oh, nice! And the same with you? How many grandkids or great-grandkids do you have?

KUROKAWA: I have five great-grandkids and I have--gee, I don't know. [laughter] One thing I wanted to say was we had a lot of soldiers from the mainland, and they--we became friends with them. And then we went to visit them. One of them was from Cincinnati. We went to visit him and his family, and do you know, when he passed away he told him wife he wanted to be--his ashes to be thrown over 00:35:00Salt Pond.

FUKUMOTO: That's really something special.

DUNHAM: Wow.

KUROKAWA: Yeah, I felt sorry for the wife, but that's what he wanted.

FUKUMOTO: That's what he wanted, yeah.

KUROKAWA: But we treated them real good, you know. All these soldiers that came.

FUKUMOTO: Fed them--did all that kind of stuff. Yeah, let them come into your home and eat and all that?

KUROKAWA: We used to--oh! They used to buy from the commissary, turkey and stuff. They would buy and they would bring. So I'd never baked any--pumpkin pie, or whatever. But I had to learn how to do that, because they wanted to eat that! [laughter]

FUKUMOTO: Oh, wow! Oh, so they would bring the--

KUROKAWA: From the commissary.

FUKUMOTO: Oh, and then you--oh wow.

DUNHAM: So what was it like when you visited in Ohio?

KUROKAWA: Cincinnati.

DUNHAM: Cincinnati, Ohio.

KUROKAWA: Well, it's a different country, you know? Not like here, yeah. But it was nice. But he came to visit us several times too. We had a couple of friends that came to visit us and we went to visit them.

FUKUMOTO: Do you remember his name, the soldier?

KUROKAWA: Well, that guy was a German. He was Hank Schwan. And the other guy was French, I think. I forgot his name already. [laughing]

FUKUMOTO: That's neat.

NONAKA: I cannot--

DUNHAM: Oh, you need to wrap up? I just wanted to ask you real briefly. I know you're getting ready to go to Japan. Have you been many times?

NONAKA: Yes.

DUNHAM: Yeah, okay. And do you have family there still you're connected to?

NONAKA: No, just relatives.

DUNHAM: Just relatives, okay, okay. What part of Japan is your family from?

NONAKA: I'm from Niigata, but my husband was from Fukuoka.

DUNHAM: Okay, okay. All right. Well, great. Well, before we stop, is there anything else you guys would like to share we didn't ask about? Anything else today, reflecting back on your long and inspired lives here in Kauai?

NONAKA: No, I think that's about it.

DUNHAM: Okay.

NONAKA: I don't know if Mrs. Kurokawa gets some. I'm going.

KUROKAWA: I wanted to write about my brother, so I wrote down what I--

DUNHAM: Thank you, yes. Is this for us to keep? Is that okay?

KUROKAWA: Yeah, I wanted you to keep.

DUNHAM: Okay, we want to include that. Okay. Well, thank you so much. I'm sorry our time was short.

FUKUMOTO: Thank you.

DUNHAM: But I'm really grateful that you took the time today.

NONAKA: Thank you very much.