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SAMUEL PROCTOR ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM at
the University of Florida.
Interviewee: Frank Kamiya
Interviewer: Robert Emmanuel
Date: November 14, 1981
Location: Palm Beach County
Concerns the Yamato Colony of the early nineteen hundreds and specifically, the
Yamato Colony School as well as Mr. Kamiya's experience in the public schools of
Palm Beach County.
K: I was going to tell you the first teacher was Lawrence Ghoul, and then tsbecame
HIUA, C-GeAY
Molly Monroe andryet ee. I've forgotten what her first name was. ThenCL(7i k)tji'Nt-
Brown and then T!L-Y Davis, which was the last teacher there, and it was all in
a one-room school house. Well, it was all
Cause you had the eight grades, right in one room and the one I mainly remember
was F Davis because of the way she handled the kids, two of them that was really
at that time, was suppose to be rough characters. And one of them would Dan Smith
and the other was SemS Pagan Alr- remember distinctly, she chased B.. Pagan
all around the room, up and down the aisles.gb* she finally caught him across the
aisle from where she was standing. She drug him all the way across the desk there and
she really handled him. She made him go outside and pick a switch and bring it in
so she could use it on him.
E: She made him go out and get the switch.
K: Yeah, and in fact, that's the way she did vwhei-req Ga-S6,iff she wanted to whip
anybody and if I:.Sa_ Sf, the switch wasn't big enough, well, she'd send him back
out again to get another one to satisfy her. She'd lay it on him.
E: Now when you say she was the last teacher at the school, did the school usually have
just one teacher at a time, being a one-room operation?
K: She'd teach one subject to one grade and then go to the next grade and next, next ,
next, on up to the eighth grade. You want me to give everybody that was in the school?
E: Well, if you can remember from your last year. Hc.rbgggt''old were you when you
during your last year at the school?
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K: Fourth grade. '" .
E rWeMl-gy-rightr-~hahrd ogivtn ^Th da t+ h~r; ;Th'- trcr Iindsz--^cf'Tt i ..
E:S **^hc-', w.ai &4-ta? l-et ..-
Ir: YeahY ven before I started school I can even remember -j'i'. everybody
that even attended the school.
4
E: Actually, !a one other thing that I wanted to ask you about Bly/Davis Smith.
Was she a new teacher? Was she a young teacher at the time?
K: Eighteen."
'- .You 0colt=..4 those days, you know, teachers weren't so easy to get.
E: Was -iag-s.she a friendly teacher? what do you remember as your impressions
of her as a fourth grader?
K: I think she was good.-.SaBt tggB -A..ter we left "Yamato, -he Ieni-t-to
,the school --ihj in .other words...,after Yamato closed upAwent to Boca RatonAshe
drove that first school bus down there to take us to school and teach down there
too.
E: What year would this have been, your fourth grade year?
K: What year?
E: What year did she dcome to the school?
K: '23 I guess. '23 or '24.
E: And was she just there for that one year or JSUBSH did she stay on?
K: .JJS after Yamato School closed, I went to Boca Raton and she taught down there.
E: But the Yamato School closed about when?
K: I'm sixty-six now. At fourth grade I must have been nine. Fifty-seven years ago.
This is eighty-one,
E: 1924, then.
K: That was the last year.
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E: .jkE What you remember about the subjects? Do you remember having any favorite subject
in particular?
K: Spelling. I got a big kick out of spelling because I could spell most iBS agr
E: .i1t TM.,Lwas she the type of teacher who, from whom you could get a lot of individual
attention or was it, did you feel as though she was able to give everybody in the
one room there quite a bit of attention in the course of an average day?
K: It wasn't too much of individual attention .'gefre,, see, there must have been
about fifteen kids in the one room, but she had to teach all these different grades
and anyone of them maybe one or two in a grade.
E: Oh, I see.
K: But she had, in the hour, between eight and three she had to teach each one of those
grades.
E: She must have had a lot of patience.
K: Well, in a way, yws. But I think the spelling was my favorite because for some reason
because I was a pretty good speller.
E: What about 'ag the language factor? Was that a big problem in the school?
K: No, we all spoke English just like we do now.
E: Now 1I0si C were most of the Japanese families bilingual, oni-H e-theTr l: :t of
K: N tMrkt=E,; 11, I es.C..-.-, thetj were only. at that time in the
Yamato School there wa-e only .- two of the Japanese families there.. 'i' i
) l f -my uncle's id' and us.
E: iSBSRiS you saidAfifteen students in the school.
K: Okay. 1 like in my class there were, shoot, there weren't but two of us in my
class. There was Hazel Smith and myself and then, well L mei-I e eetz--the-Tamily.-.
.jLL-go by families now. There's one Pagan family, had a daughter, Nina. She only went to
first grade because she died with pneumonia or something like that. I've forgotten what
it was she died of, but then the Smith family, there was.Hazel Smith was in my class.
Sand Dan and Smith. They were all in that school but
Aridf^Sa"sse and Dan and'%W Smith. They were all in that'.-/ 4 school h_, but
.
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K: there were about four more brothers alongside of them-ni r :-ah va;*.U :i-aa.',
AK.' he youngest one was Lawrence and -7Sa then came Hazel and Marjorie, Dan, as, Wilson
AA, f'0C 4 j S^rjY ,T V^' "'
E: So there must have been quite -aew American students.
K: There's another, th -Grel family that was the postmaster's kid5 b charlie, Nrie
and Iris. There was another Pagan family butJSMZ5was the only one at that time that
was going to scho AS then it was our family which was, at the beginning, was me
because my younger sister and brother hadn't started school down there. It was me and
my brother 9a4 and then Mifae and '3 3. And then the 's-fI family.Vgegin
CHAI I KA O r-rovnoo 1,QiS3
with the oldest. 4E M KWS1*?Si, I5Mte Teamawlm. I can never remember Al m
g^ss s was in my class.SkOK And then there was some other ones younger
than her that started with an S too but -T"MI I can never remember her name7and
that was the extent of the people iSj' in the school.
E: Who exactly started the school? I, I've heard from people that it was predominantly
Japanese with some white students in there. Predominantly white with some Japanese.
Was there any kind of division between who had the most percentage of students
represented or was it pretty much a community-type school?
K: It was a community-type thing. I mean, SEgi T-,at that time __'efnf i we
never thought about discrimination pi qg!,
E: 'Utfi Was it started by the people in the colony then, in conjunction with the people
in the community ,
K:l' '/ I) ii L- j .Ysome notation down there about some guy starting teaching the
Japanese kids.
E: Right hiFC Cd--Tia hs'7e bin-th--
, That would have been Mr. Ray Binder. The evening school for Japanese ;")
K: +,---g ty rr" -_ ... .both of my sditei's older sisters/
c
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K: must have gone to that because, like I say, %.Q;-fXQ !I don't remember them even
start i ngt-)Td4a first grade in there. And then as far as kindergarten, Wb$iSS
there was no such thing as kindergarten.
E: So you started first grade at the colony school yourself and came up through
i t8l the fourth grades
K: VThen I went fifth grade in Boca Raton.
E: Now, when you went to Boca Raton, would that have been the grammar school?
K: i;Frt went through the eighth grade.
"7; iThereaa& three rooms, it was a three room affair.
E: Did you know Tom Kobayashi? Or did he come before?
K: Oh, I know him when he was born. Same way(-As and -ESRthe girl. They were all
born in the common.
E: So you were all together then at the Boca Raton school?
K: See, they are all much younger than me.
' N' 'aLBut that'S where they; first went to school.
E: Q4 e agwhen you went down to Boca Raton, what happened to the
younger students behind you after 1924 when the colony school folded? Did they
go on to ^-X1 1 '-ro^
K: -aMB-, they all went to Boca Raton.
E: They followed suit. None of them went farther north for any reasoiSt
K: No.
E: I've had a number of people mention the NMitchell's to me too were from Boca Raton.
K: They were down in Boca RatonmpBeakMa.
E: Did you know any of the Mitchell family down there at that grammar school?
K:
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E: They were younger too?
K: He aggwl was pretty much of a big shot down there I guess you might sa but
when the boom came up/ he went into real estate things too.
E: You talking about J.C. now?
K: U- ...
K: i, r ,r if he were alive now he would be pretty darn
E: But rcLU. you would have known his sorn John and Bill, when they he ,js C i .
E: They would have been behind you in the grammar school.
K: And I don't know whether there's any Akins there now'or not.
"E: You mentioned Mr. Gould. Did IM yoci him for a teacher at the Yamato School?
K: Not me. And I used to go over there though to the school and mess around with them and
during th- ah;.- mus playtime period.
E: 1WA. I'd like to.- -; touch on your family for just a second. Do
you remember the year that your family came to the colony?
K: i-4fw~1. _
E: Is it, without pressing you any further for a particular date, is it possible they
came with EB ,some of the first settlers?
K: Well, .yah -: ( they were among the first .oe
E: So you would have been born in the colony yourself.
K: All of us kids.
E: All of you were born in the colony then?
K: Well, The Good Samaritan Hospital here in West Palm Beach.
E:- y when did your family leave the colony?
The colony folded I understand.
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K: Well, as far as leaving,4w, our family actually didn't leave. In fact, we were the
last ones there. 'iKt!ki. my dad didn't leave there until about mid-fifties. He went
South to California'so-I gue&6 to be more or less close to the older sister and her
family. Well, I'll put it this way. The first to leave in our family was the oldest
sister after she got married. She had two kids down here and they were three and four
maybe ,wi.,L,before they left to go to Californir a ndtbi then Mishi, she went to
Washington D.C. I believe aroundggM in the mid-thirties. And then my youngest sister,
she left in the early thirties. Well, she got married again to a fellow from New York.
They live in Long Island now, and then when I went to first year >f college, I went to
University of Florida and that was during the depression. Well, the depression had
first started and so after first year there I dropped out and started working to save
up enough to go back Tiin the meantime, YIwS I heard about the junior college and
I went there for about two and a half years I guess. Then'iSbEE#-in about '36 I
went back to the University of Florida and I finished up there in the summer of '37.
E: How -SEa long had the junior college been opened when you went there? 'QetiE=
K: It was a new thing because I was the first graduate.
E: Now I've had some information given to me'which people have said that' ggc i ES-
'.TrIst,. you were in the first graduating class, right?
K: "Yea"i There were the three of us. Two girls and myself. .t.i I didn't have
my picture in of myself but I had most everybody else. 'But I-w -working on theg^ort"
,-f -. the government at that time was helping students out: _1:.so I was working in
0FS ft the grammar school as a recess or opalielteve supervisorgso the teachers
were real pleased with meVecause 'L.hes i 4i after about a couple of months they
said, what are you doing with these kids out here. Nb- *it was a reprimand or
something, so I said what do you mean? She said, well, when they come back to the
classroom, they all quieted down\they're ready to go to work.
E: Now this was at the Boca grammar school?
K: No. TisLon Beach Junior College.
K: No. ThisALong Beach Junior College.
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E: Oh, I see.
K: "TIu-74il-the grammar school I was working with was--thi,;: wel, at that time,s i
aoai --.--.+ called Palm Beach Central School, grammar school-iafr a high school
"' '-' took care of f
right there tooqand t,. I guess I V about four hundred kids everyday.
E: On the playground.
K: 'ea I never have any trouble.
E: At this time did you have any ideas about ever going into teaching or anything like
that?
K: Oh -yi;tl. I went on and got a HPO, health and'phys ed,.degree.
E: Now that came, that degree came from Florida after you went back.
K: University of Florida.
E: So did you,py-t tght after-oT-..
K: Would you have taught for eighty dollars a month?
E: Eighty dollars a month. Would tha-t!S Shave been in the public schools?
Palm Beach County?
K: No, that was tg /ri-,northern part of the state.
E: Oh, northern Florida. Course they're still much lower today compared to down here
too.
K :- *' ,
E: That's eighty dollars a month thoughaiS
K: sMie, but we couldn't dress like these people do now. You had to have a coat and tie an
shine your shoes and things like that.
E: Well, we still have to do that in private school. We still have to wear a tie.
K: Well, you know they don't do that in C -~I- I
E: It's hard to tell a teacher anymore for appearance, isn't it? EBI= so the
year you graduated from the University of Florida would have been w-ho
K: Summer of '37.
-VJ,----I J
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E: So you wereiS; still in the tail end of the depression?
K: rE RitBut I.had ml orS and social studies and psychology, Spanish. I don't
know where I had it in French or not. But my major was in health and,.phys ed and)
"@r Biology and chemistry and -CT '
E: S was there anything in particular that prompted you to enroll with the
University of Florida as over against another school or was that just the place to
go then?
K: I guess mainly most of.the kids in my graduating class lM6Bgoing there,lause I could
have gotten a basketQball scholarship at Lakeland. In fact, they offered it to me
E: This would have been Lakeland...
K: Yeah. It's a Methodist school in the center part of the state.
E: Oh, I see. 1 _t'.;rt
K: They just ____ ___
E: So you had a lot of friends at the University of Florida and that made a big
difference then?
K: Well, being a^^ /%i back country kid, -e -3iZmg j I just figured I
ought to go to some place where the rest of my schoolmates were going.
E: It's interesting what you mentioned before about discrimination because one of the
things I wanted to ask you about concerned whether or not you ever actually
encountered what we would call discrimination today. I'm sure back then there were
people, there's always been prejudiced people but did you ever encounter any outright
discrimination or hostility from the students?
K: .fLB Well like I say, when I supervised on the playground in West Palim f-jSWill !
hang around four or five hundred kids a:.day./ 0.
E; What about when you were actually in school yourself though, in grammar school and
so on and so forth? ( ..'F-hFe did you encounter in those days many other minority
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E: students in the schools or were there not that many people settled in the area
'7
yet -
K: Well, the colored people were about the only ones and Ei M they didn't go
to the same school. They had their own school. g01gi -'-ig I guess they never
talked about .integration then, but as far as Latins and other nationalities like
they have now, well there was no such thing. '" Riviera here, at that time, now
they were settled by it. -Tj -cf I' 1 was more or less settled by what we called
(CD-L IS in Key West. It was more like a fishing town and I don't know whether
people discriminated against them but they, they had sort of a bad reputation and
so had Green Acres too. I OJefvt the downthere, but as far as acts that are
discriminating against people, well, qr OT?-______ done about it. L sure
we had aBBiRr colored sharecroppers, but I didn't see where we were venting
any discrimination against the w- .; we had a couple of women that worked
with us on Saturdays. uraIysi-j^-.A-r .._. on Saturdays it was more or
less a half day thing, but we'd have them come in and wash our clothes by the old
"" method you'know.< Pour in theCL ' 'i blueing water and all, but come noontliegigg
we'd invite them to come in and have 1B!! lunch with us and as far as thinking they
were any different than we were, we never thought about that.
E: Well now you graduated in '37 from the University of Florida. What did you do between
graduation and the start of World War II?
K: I was cooking. In fact, that's the way I went through college MiiAMs I was working
more than I was going to school.
E: So you just kind of kept that up following graduation.
K: Well, I figured if I couldn't make more than seventy, eighty dollars a month, I could
make more money cooking.
E: It pays you more to cook than to teach. Whereabouts did you cook?
K: Well, I cooSW -neti ruamnpu; trhr mru 2~t7gl, jt.fwa7 off campus as far as that goes.
Restaurant there and toward the end of the, going to school up there, I was working in
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K: a drive-in and I guess when I came back home, why, I helped on the farm about a year
.AA'L,'* since I graduated, then I found this wasn't for me so I went to
M and Son and got a job cooking meat.
E: Did you cook in any of the big hotels down there?
K: oeah,' but you never heard of them. Jack Dempsey and Vanderbilt?
E: Oh, I've heard of that.
K: I cooked good. And then r'y a went to Italian food and I became well-known as
an Italian chef. In fact, I was known as one of the best Italian chefs in the South.
E: So ish"ma you've been in Florida your
whole life. What did you do when the War started? Did you keep on cooking?-"G. TTTFi n7.
K: Nobody bothered me any. I 4sA \/'I (. ,) t '' ;),JA
_mat's all you had to do.
iSIn fact, as far as pride is concerned in proportion to the other areas of the state
there's only a handful in Florida and so the government already knew all about them.
A few in Pensacola, St. Petersburg, Miami, Jacksonville, OcalaY .( and I explained to
you about the Yamato Colony so they more or less had the tabs on everybody then.
E: So as a Japanese in south Florida, you didn't experience anything like the Japanese
in California?
K: fpSp' No hassle at all.
E: What about the people though.;l"STEUMBss
K: q.rl. -t^ y igrwi j I don't know actually how many but 4^>O0 /7 what you
can count on your hands. One fellow in Miami, he was interested i nggg flying
his own plane. He had a plane he used to fly over Miami and they=1..el him in and
put him in a detention camp and '_ over there in St. Petersburg and
one, I think one in Jacksonville.
E: 'S E^ ......e.S'^ they didn't have any camps in Florida. They would have
sent these people to California.
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K: sk.
E: ,P*Wia o. you say the government didn't bother you but what about individuals?
Did you ever encounter anything during the war??w"M M
K: No hassle at all. In fact, rji think it was right at the beginning of the war
I went upEM to that place in Ohio, right on the lake there, a little outside of
Cleveland. It's a well-known historic ... anyhow, I went to that I cooked
up there during that summer.
E: I believe I know what you're talking about but it's right on the tip of my tongue.
I live not too far from Cleaveland. I should remember.
K: Singers had a big say so in that town. JEX g controlled the town.
I still _. Anyhow, if I was going to get hassled, I'd have been
hassled up there I imagine.F iwa?,S it's all in the fact that I just minded my own
business and just went about my own.
E: Well, geography then must have had a lot to do with it too thoue t
K: Well, my sister was in Washinton, D.C.
E: But I mean the Japanese in California certainly weren't looking for any trouble but
they experienced something much different--mainly I guess because three, four thousand
miles closer
K: Did you condemn them put them into something like that?
E: Condemn the American government? Well, yes and no.
K: I don't.
E: Well, the argument's often been presented though that they didn't round up the
German's either that were in this country at the beginning of the war when they
certainly might have been suspicious of them.
K: ge they weren't so-called ghettos of Germans either, were they?
E: that's hard to say. I have --gigS relatives up in Philadelphia who still talk
about Germantown as it was known theiq o....g....i
K: Oh, they had so-called Germantown here and they're all right.
E: That's right. ', si, I've been told about that 0 7
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K: You have. And in North of ( they had White City which is full of the
Germans.
E: So SA you don't personally condemn the government for what they did in
California?
K: No. I/ hundreds of thousands, hundreds of thousands or what have
you, of Japanese people. 6 if they had gone around investigating to find spies
or whatever in that group, they'd still be going through that bunch, investigating.
They wouldn't have never gotten finished so the only way to do it is grab them all and
then we'd out the bad from that. Right?
E: -*eFh, it would have been a lengthy process
K: A n ri ,World War II would have been over by the time they got around
to it so the only way to catch them is to grab all at one time and weed them out.
E: I guess the thing that bothers a lot of people when they think about it though is
the fact that there are a lot of
K: They werevcompensatedc
E: Well, plus there were a lot of young families and everything ) caught up tobioeS
K: -h, but I mear--, t^i; in my estimation TMk-i C)I- 2 0 ,i ? 'i
'SSiii-p you'd be surprised how many of these young, young families that at that time
CE loyal to Japan to-a-) -A9m -.e- -well, I don't know whether they still go
it that way or not but like our family, thel4MASAaf i-'s family, they had dual
citizenship up until they were twenty-one. Then they had the choice of whichever
they want.
E: -59ii.i Is that when you became naturalized at twenty-one?
K: What I'm asking you, like I say, I had dual citizenship. And I just dropped on. I mean
I didn't come out and make any written statement or anything. I just tikntCil,
E: You just took one, right
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K: EM. ..
E: Afgn when did your parents die? How old were you when your parents passed on?
K: I was about seventeen when my mother died.
E: -;8 So they stayed in this country too?
K:
E: They never went back to Japan
K: Well, my mother died in about 133 or |M34. My d -gSS father died in the old country.
He was eighty-eight I think.
E: He did go back then.
K: C ,a."'
E: What year did he go back?
K: Oh, late fifties I guess.
E: SisST do you remember talking to him about the war while it was in progress?
Did he have any particular feelings?
K: Well, I was here and he was fi in California.' B by the way,,/e and my older
sister and her kids were put into one of those camps. Manzinar.
E: Your father and your older sister were in Manzinar. 'E3 Did he come back to
Florida then after ;-----?-J.. -
K: No, he stayed out, after v he went back to California.
E: So you never saw him then after he got sent to California?
K: You mean after he BgI-went back to California from Mansinar?
E: Right.
K: No, I saw him in mid-fifties. I went out aMba "f"l4l''-1
E: 9JM do you remember personally feeling any kind of detachment from the old country?
I mean, you were born in this country but you were still Japanese. Did you feel
any particular feelings of detachment from Japan or attachment to the U.S. during
.the war, ..a.^' i -'V'yt ES.. "would you consider yourself?
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K: I just consider myself American citizen.
E: AfiM And you didn't feel any, any particular sense of patriotism to the old country
or tgIIsf, more strongly the other way or anything like that?
K: No, I in fact S ; I was Most everybody
else was. asa --. sy, I mean, the way they handled the
.Japanese out in California, put them all in and then weed them out gradually. I
mean, that's the only alternative I can, even to this day, that's the only way I
can see it.
E: %NMi- Did most of the other Japanese people that you knew down here, '*.|B|^ were
they kind of conde- ri-min ,efP B of the Japanese, as far as the outbreak of the
war 7S
K: Well, even though I am of Japanese parentage, I never cared too much
about associating with Japanese people especially older generation because they-,
w i =S^^T^ 2 in my estimation '"sSar ?had no sense of humo s
E: Very traditional.
K: r fl
E: Too traditional.
K: ^^ *'") ./ i 1 /. Hell, I mean I act just like you do or anybody else
that was born and raised in the United States.
E: Well, I guess the War itself too, even in Japan, from some of the things I read was
kind of a jumping off point though as far as the younger generation over there
and the traditional older generation. Some of the people you read these days, it seems
like after the war, even in Japan, SS4LSrit was a kind of a breakL,.p"t2rg;-
CO2. a little less respect, not that you are a disrespectful personally, but a little less
respect and appreciation for a lot of the traditions. I guess a lot of people from
the sound of it loosened up after thezWar. ind of broke off from what their parents
had believed and thought about different things.
K: Well, the only thing, as far as tradition is concerned, way back m!,when my mother
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K: was -ALAJ she used to have these, like a buffetsaa. every Sunday, zoot
445i?^ she would have all sorts of Japanese food set out on a long table. Anybody
wanted to he could come over and help himself. We Jtneasgs never did run out of
anything, no matter how many people came. Even from Miami they'd come down!Without us
knowing they were coming and it was just a general get together.
E: And that was pretty typical of the old country?
K: I don't know whether it was or not, but we used to do it and that APWSlHSAi family
used to do it. Well, not have everybody over like we did but the other.N daeM and
that things true of the He did while he was here. In fact, he
had the only food around. And the men would shoot pool and gamble while the women
prepared the food and everything and well they'd, I guess they'd gossip among themselves
E: Pretty much an all day affair.
K: Oh, pEr. Everytime they'd get hungry well they'd go get whatever they wanted to.
E: Now 4JE, you basically have been cooking most of your life in different restaurants
in the area? ': did A' you fer thought about
"~-:-. nt 5Tt T ...
., cL.ing back to teaching or utilizing your degree?
K: Well, it all depends on what you call utilizing a degree now. Like I say, I took quite
a bit of courses in psychology and sociology. Well, I use that all the time.
E: Right.
K: No matter in what business, line of business I'm in. It works all the time.
E: So you still put a lot of stock in the education you got at Florida?
K: -fa I haven't regretted none of it. The only thinlr"B39 when I said I
wanted to get in their HPO, or health and p1s ed, this guy that was head of the
health and phys ed department, he was skeptical about why I was taking it. In fact,
he didn't even ask me, but when we went to these observation sessions, )tisI?'" .1-'I
grammar schools over there at the University, it was P. K. Younge High Schoo1v-kmriw-
%t%-and grammar school, which was something in conjunction with the University of
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K: Florida. I had done everything that they were showing me when I was at the Palm
Beach Junior College. I didn't say anything about it and then when it come to tests
and term papers and such, why I could rattle these things off just like nothing.*-_eAfTi
il we had a lot of football and basketball players in my class and they
were all going to be for this stuff toe'so they would come over to t/.'U ) 40 to
school and ask me to help them out, to work out different projects for them _it"e!.
E: You say you had three courses in speech?
K>: You would never know it though.
E: In college, oh, just for public speaking you mean?
K: JeXF, handwriting too. Boy, you cantt read my handwriting.
E: Was the salary factor a big surprise to you as far as teachers in northern Florida?
I mean, up to the point that you decided against it, had you really been planning on
a teaching career?
'1..
K: -AS t I was thinking maybe somewhere in this county or some of the bigger counties but
I hadn't even thought about, you know, cause ... county, but when they told me
seventy, eighty dollars, well I said no.
E: -What, is there any one or few fondest memories from the colony? I know you were
pretty young at that time. but sometimes childhood things really stick out. Is there
any particular fondest memories from the colony or the school in the colony that.g .
that stick out in your mind?
K: 'ea.-gssst the so-called buffets we had-_!.gi on the weekend.
E: The all day affairs.
K: 4Wb it's more just like happy hou5ag- and we used to go to the beaches on Sundays
and maybe two or three families would get together and they'd all fix some-a4tof a
lunch and the men would go over and fish all the time practically aY.ndYeicdYtS-
it was a chance for-ibia to get together and gossip, and at least get together and
so we had big times then.
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E: Now even after the colony, I guess it wasn't too long after the colony school closed
that the colony itself closed down, right? Would that have been in the thirties?
h_ The pineapple blight was the final blow, correct?
K: Oh, no. That was in the early twentie a)hng
E: Oh, well.-st d .ip the closing of the colony rUr yaMsr gradual j*7c, L
K: It was a gradual thing. iVSy n-.en,". "W d ^ you hardly-/eawthat it was
one m in.'.i.gS S .^ They went to all different parts of the country.
E: But the closing of the school, now that was rather sudden I assume, or did it close
for any one particular reason?
K: Wasn't nobody else to educate.
E: @ no new settlersar
K: No. -l7hJT the only new students would be the iggiigi family and well, the
""WaatEEi family, they had one son\and he'd been going there.
E: So you're, now you've been mentioned to me by some people as .t W "''with the last
class or the last student there or among the last students.
K: At Yamato?
E: At the colony school, right.
K: Yeai.
E: So youP, your fourth grade year there was C-/'I- \L,' !L T' ("\
K: L-T1Iear'. -
E: But it was the last year of the school.
K: -e R-
I:;- hen we went to Boca Raton.
E: Was there any education or attempts at education going on in any of the homes within
the colony?-O S do you remember your parents or do you remember anybody else's
parents or families trying to make any attempt at formal education within the home?
Were there lessons at night or anything, any attempts to teach the ways of the
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E: old country or maybe teach other things?
K: yo ike I said, my motheraii fhad." geyou might call i42 grammar book)S4'"
got these grammar books for my older two sisters and I remember-A aL c "
tri-eto teach them the different characters in them e
E: Do you remember their response?
K: No.
E: '7SSW any ideas as to why she did that? J-tQarVf^-i-
K: I guess MM because like I said, she was a teacher in Japan.
E: Do you think possibly it was for the sake of tradition -too? ;ia-'-tee s
K: Well, it could have been. When she, you know these different animals that they made
with paper or something. 4g| .30fi, pd! -B.l; AdBnr"w b
Then the animals and flowers and stuff, he::;TEi:;%Lr; she tried to teach
the -anyv-,b how to make those things.
E: f *t-. when your parents came here, do you remember themg as you grew up
in the colony and in the area, was there ever any indication from them that they
wanted to go back to the old country someday. Did they come here to find a fortune
so to speak and then maybe return later?
K: I never heard them speak, them speaking about going back. In fact, I didn't even
know my dad was wanting to go. Oh, yeah, I did too. He, at one time, he did ask me
if I wanted to go over there with him.- This was after the war. He asked me if I wanted
to/\and I said no.
E: But originally they came here with the i B same intention as many of the
others then.
K: Yeb bf--
E:
the colony so far that there has been some reference to the idea that many of the
colonists came to acquire some kind of wealth and then go back, or is that a
misconception?
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K: aa the single men probably did but the -.;aais d -if- the ones that
were married, I don't think they were.
E: What do you suppose s&."the reasons for many of the married people coming over
were? I mean, to make a clean break with your country and go off to a new land with
not too much, south Florida then was not exactly a garden spot I guess.
K: .ggga *from what I gather TSBf- Henry Flagler was the main source
of them coming down this way. In other words, he told them if they /came down and
homesteaded land, well, it was theirs.
E: *%iV1 i. How much land did your parents get as a result of that?
K: At that particular time, I don't know how much land he was suppose to have gotten
but over the years he had spots all over the county, the area between Del ey and
Boca Raton and out west of Yamato and Del fiey.
E: This is your father now.
K: W'ShQ
E: Now .dris. did he pass that on to you people when he went back to Japan or did he
sell it or did somebody sell it for him?
K: He sold some of it but my younger brother got part of it, but then .M..Al-S tjhf -
-bth' when the war was declared.zl i2SVS' the govern-menviit. took a major part
of it. tt-TiFf6 for instance, the land that a &was used for the radar school there
which,/FAU was south end of i), g &-.;i iy.C from what I understand our home was used
as their personnel office. It was a two-story house.
E: That's not still standing do you think?
K: Nor..htib -:-i ar. 'iZtW r4 9 rWe
E: Was he pretty well compensated for that, or did they just appropriate it for the
war years and then give it back?
K: Well, from what I understm.'w;fp;-3ifir"they were suppose to notify all the
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K: landowners there when the war was over, watndlteyi, they were suppose to have been
able to buy it back for taxAs from some sort of misunderstanding iO my brother
was notified but the rest of us weren't. Especially the one in Washington, D.C.
She particularly was interested in it and so she was pretty teed off about the whole
mess.
E: I imagine she would be.
K: Just think what it's worth now.
E: "?SSfr So it just kind of got pushed inthe background.
K: Well, and the little bit of land my youngest brother h'jEgg
*ShSaeid that his home was built on, it was eventually sold for back debts and the
little that was reaped out of it was distributed among his kids.
E: PO now that we're on the subject of land, Mr. Morikami owned a lot of land in that
area. Did you know him personally?
K: Ohhe t"/-'I -
E: i I guess he would have been in his twenties or so when you were growing up.
K: 7h, Iv ;i/ut he was'35kiP3S ept more or less to himself you might say.
Except when we had a little bit of things on the weekend.
E: NowTE. I' 1 B did you know him personally?
K: He was my uncle) -
P'.4, :.bro-htr.'e,.my father's brother.
E: Oh, I see.
K: Although they had different names.
E: Yes, 8itwhat's the reason for that?
K: It goes way back to when they were in Japan. I guess my father seems to have
been sort of an outdoorsman. eHase S you might sayvequivalent to a cowboy
over here. He used to round up wild horses and things like that and for some reason
our family got interested in him and, he's suppose to have been of a well-to-do
family and they had no sons of their own and they wanted their name to be carried
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K: in that colony.
E: j ho do you remember in particular? Any that stand out other than
K: I mean, as far as people standing out, there's none of them actually stood out like
the Yoshida family, Yoshida brothers and Ashida and his wife and Mori, he was a
O.S,, 3 (" ;'} .*j*.'."* v
single fellow. Yamauchi was there with his wife and -only boy. And4UgSgiB we
used to call him Oscar. lc I think all these American names like Don and
Henry and Joeeg they were given after they came over to the United
States, but B Hl I guess WWa was the one that more or less stands out
because all the men went to his place to shoot pool and gamble.
E: Now what relation was he again to Tom. fi _.3t r..
BV-0my -. ., I
K: No, that Qif asht is not related.
E: Okay. g.TT1f 7gE asS, now that we're on the subject of individual families,
ShWl mR-H Wyy I know you mentioned this once before but for the record again, your
family was the only Kamiya family in the colony, correct? An.'.'ricl,_dir-e .
when did your father start -imm- how did he come by the gas station-grocery store
operation there on Dixie? Did he get into that shortly well, as you were growing up,
was that the family business?
K: 'rscaS=FS Well, you might say that he had two businesses here. Farming and the
grocery.
f'3T"'Y3,-:I ^&^:J7ist g^"^
'0"'^
2VSThere had to be someone to supply thS-people with groceries and all and I guess he
was naturally the one to do it because he was so close to the idg Is, wa;.;m-e
not only served the colony but the colored people and the other people around.
E: So it was not simply for the people in the colony but anybody who was interested
bought from him. What about the other people in the colony ZBEa-apart from
them, your father must haveV- aQ& -M 'z'L'-: farmed more of a variety than if he
was selling different things to them. Didn't most of the people in the colony
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K: on, so that's where he got his name, Kamiyo.
E: I see. So SS your family name is Sakii in actuality.
K: 490s1 / ,
E: How about that. Joe is not a Japanese name of course. iB i was your
uncle's first name different? f
K: Well, just like my dad was Henry, and my mother's brothel Don and John.
E: So people in Japan were using these as common first names.
K: Well, no. I guess they got these names after they came over here.
E: Oh, I see. Okay.
K: _-e I like me for instance. I'm the only one in the family that's called by
his or hers American name. I'm Frank or Franklin or whatever and the rest of the
family is called by their Japanese name.
E: I see.
K: I don't know what's the reason for that.
'Jar SJ'd < e
E: 'tfV So Jo/ Sti7Sf'4;th&Rt+he-orect.-rtnunciaoz^
E.: Iakiilr'4was your father's brother r5, TSB a so your fatherxaDts _i"u.-bI'iji-
c'It{Erti Ot; e probably came over sT.rtly-t.haae B`l shortly after he did.
K: They come together.
E: tf-rteSt anmtiEi i from the sound of it, S-, he came with a small
group and then some of the other settlers drifted in over the years.
K: .After hearing about him. Now, according to,gI some stories I've heard, M MSW
f:a there's a couple other-T" at that started this whole colony business.
aseordintgz-tthe'.-riords, according to the records at the County Park Office
But I never heard of them.
E: Another aMti .
K: No, another fellow, I don't remember his name right now off hand, but like I say, ,d
I never heard of the gu 'but 't-. I can name most of the Japanese people that war '
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E: specialize in one or two main crops.
K: No, they were all truck farmers.
E: Anything and everything huh?
K: During the farming season, whatever..
E: The emphasis, you know, on a lot that's been written about the colony is on, is
on pineapple I.,A
K: Well, pineapples are labor. That'ssiv what, the original -idea was--
to have a more or less like a pineapple plantation things b
E: But they made adjustments.
K: Well, it was in this case a necessity because the pineapples didn't do any good.
M I mean the soil wasn't suited for that type of thing.
C-',4 What else did your father sell besides groceries and produce that he farmed?
^S aei was it an all-purpose store?
K: `6SpESSJs # the store was like an old country store. You had clothing and
cooking utensils and jewelryaJ-. 8gi."-ms-d watches and stuff like that.
I mean, nothing expensive and then candy and (
E: It must have been a pretty good living for him being the only store in that area.
K: Well, I don't know whether he collected from everybody or not but 4QS it was
all charge accounts. Even with colored people too. I mean, he let them charge.
And usually settled up at the end of the farming se sor-ES .--.
E: When people had their own profits in.
K: ZaS=S- Q_
E: Who did he buy his gas from?
K: At first his tag was 41M-a W i .Standard Oil. And then when he went to Jl_ _''\_
~ /,* well he stayed with Standard longest though. And Citiservice and Texacoq
E: How many pumps did he have? Do you remember?
K: Two. All you needed wasfij.just regular. They only had regular gas then.
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E: E4 S;I'- Inbl\become so used to this type and that type.
K: In other words, you had to prime the- .g, gas pump and push it, they were back and
forth like that and at the top of the pump there was agsaE five gallon
glass container with different cards a gallon of gas, well you watched
whatever -t-hat- act one gallonAzf you wanted five, well you pumped it up
to five gallons.
E: 'fV how long did he keep the store? Until the depression years?
K: g no. About Mear sssK, I guess or tenty-seri?, but about that time an Irish
family moved in about a block north across the street and they opened up a
grocery store too. 'i-Fl FB tTe; Well, even at that time, I guess all the
'kitjMis Japanese had left practically except the sSMM0B1's.
E: What kind of competition did that store provide for you people?
K: Well,rf, .. they were strictly groceries.
E: You said that was an Irish family, right?
K: -
E: Do you remember any particular reason why your father got rid of his store?
K: Well, 'ftiJ I don't know what he had in mind but he even sort of went easy
on farming too.
T.;,He farmed less of IS -OfTreTD /T .
E: Did he sell the store or just close it down?
K: No. He just closed it C "'us -Oh' he made.a garage there. Repair
garage.
E: I guess there wasn't, well, not compared to today, but still, Dixie Highway must
have been a busy place then.
K: No.
"K":.. N'- .-'
fZ C.VL~- ,- *'
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E: gliVa^m sff-ff. Not even for its time .
K: Well, si a lot of the colored people regardless of whether they could
afford a car or not, they'd go out and buy one, and not that, the cheaper cars, but
they'd get, try to make an impression and get these high class cars. Well, that
would burn a lot of gas. Well, at that time, it seemed like a lot of gas and they,
they just couldn't afford them Then they'd wind up by giving the car back to the
dealer but l W we got a lot of customers from them and we used a lot
of gas ourselves.8$ we had two'$ri.tksf:farm trucks and then we had the three
so-called passenger cars. One for going to the city and two for everyday use.
E: Sounds like quite a fleet.
-
... .. -- -
E` Tela,- it!-3J'how much did he sell his gas for a gallon? Do you remember?
K: If I remember right, the lowest was about eighteen cents.
E: .Wow."Wre-.your parents- do you remember your parents as being basically pretty
happy in this country?
K: Yeah. ""/ e' .
- E: Is that the, what they did in the colony, what most of the other people did in the
S colony provided a pretty substantial way of life,r g f- g a decent
S..standard of living?
K: ._ they all seemed to--,ja. Well, like in any
lJ a ghetto OISMfthere's a certain percentage *athat is of the lower
class.
Everybody seemed to be happy.
E: Well considering, tgwhat people define a ghetto as today, and considering
everything 'iiEtiB i ff.lrtWirtlbn : relative to the times, now and then,
would you classify the area in which the colonists lived as a ghetto according to "
today's definition, everything considered?
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K: ,tWas wh:. A qnuaIt-V'V etd-even,. .Y --
E: Not just for size though2gw
K: No, Ajigrthey- -_ stuck to themselves .like.'
E: So, sociologically. Okay, but what about economically. Would you say/it was as
bad then as most ghettos are today or
K: No, A*lob E -i because in proportion your dollar was worth so much more
E: That's for sure.
K: And you can get along without anything. And like the colored people t;iF 1in the
summertime when the farming season was all over and everything, well, they'd go
fishing and hunting this is all their livelihood, hunting and fishing. You know
they huAYiWT gophers?
E: Right.
K: And burrowed themselves in the "
E: Right.
K: Well, they used to catch them and eat them.
^uav.~~~-^-s~~-.-tf--R------------ ---- .. -'I-~-.-"' r'tt
= rGopher, raccoon and opossum and as far as fishing was concerned ("7 a
/gj -at that time it was plentiful too whether in the ocean or in the canal.
In the summertime when we had nothing to do that's what we, we'd all go to the ocean
and do our fishing and we could catch it 'At9 more than we ever ate. We used to
catch by the hundred pound sackful. My mother would, after we split them and all
she'd saw them down some way and dry them out in the sun and have them for the
wintertime.
E: t =Ei*'-^ .Jdid your parents xaS"i:II -s'bRtt still go
pretty much by eating habits in the old country, a lot of fish and vegetables?
K: No, we had a lot of vegetables. With us, we had maybe a couple of kinds of meat on
the table and six or seven different kinds of vegetables and always a great big
old pot of rice. We had rice for breakfast.
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E: Where did they get the rice from?
K: It was just out by Li Even then they had supermarkets. A&P.
E: Nobody every attempted the .ra, -+
K: Raise it? No.
-- *-2 +i my mother mainly cooked the American style food except on the
weekends.
E: -T -wanted to _et baT ttr' ITfe,- there 's -:nep-iT w'Ea-ivh' t walked about' concerning
- eoatd-'- ?"You say that Boca Grammar School went through the eighth grade, right
K: Jni;hmar And then we went to ItrEy.-
E: OP you went to Del Rey High School?
K: -Yeeh- 2.
E: Now that would have been what, Sea Crest?
K: No, at that time i:.l ,. it was Del Rey High School. You know where the grammar
school is T
M tyrner of -Squinto and VaTnnim
E: Right.
K: :tlaf well the building next to Atlantic, that was the old grammar school.
E: I see.
K: And the building on the north end f..thia,'. that block there was the high school.
E: E .... o you spent four years at d High.
,7U -what about the years there? Were they good years? t-a.S Ivas that any
different from your experiences at Boca at the grammar school?
K: Aii First year I went out for basketball.
E: Did you make it?
K: -astr- 1-s
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E: 4neyou stay on the team,
K: About four years.
E: Did you letter, you must have lettered then.
K: IfYeft
^, lt didn't even know anything about basketball when I went up there.
E: Maybe that's why you did so well.
K: Well, no, another thing is, we had to have two teams to scrimmage against each
other. We had a heck of a time. A lot of time we had to use the girls' team.
E: The girls dia have their own team then?
K: ,ZTEi7 Boy they were rough,,c'N boys though.
E: Were there mostly white students at-SEg High?
K: Oh yea-:h
E: What about the black students? J4 i Wi .-
K: They had their own school.
E: They had their own high school then.too. What'kind of sports did you all play
basically in grammar school on your own. I mean, you said you didn't play any
basketball before you got to- b gy/ .High. What had you done for activities in the
K: You never heard of this game. One of them was what we called Harry Over G
theyschool maPes iE:ebuilding gggwas like that so we chose up sides and one
would get on one side of the building and the other one get on the other side and
throw a bar over the ':"
Tf^^Harr y :.yver.-.,.
E: Sne we used to call it Anthony Over.
' WVe played that game)OCL-";'t
K: When the other side got the ball they'd go around and try to get the other person
on the opposite side and if we hit them before they got on the other side of the
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K: building gg&A they were on our side.4 then we had "Giant Stpps" and something
similar to baseball but not quite and something about go in and out the window,
and form a circle and, I forget how it's played now, and then there's London Bridge>
E: So until you got into high school at 41AS; you had" )
(&d.-\*r organized sports.-.' .........
' &tf. -HSf:a. db you remember an:i lg first impressions that were
unusual upon entering high school inErF.. Anything that stood out as a marked
experience eaw
K: Well, basketball I guess.
E: "E ii did that make life pretty exciting from that point on as far as high school
years?
K: , 6 .? ^bEec'iasewl;ld;U when I started high school,4 I'd
get up about five o'clock in the morning and go to the packing house and make sie'S
pepper crates.
,-gi
E: You'd get up at five '
K: eaP, and make two or three, make me a couple of hundred crates,
E: And work until when?
K: Until school bus came.
E: Which was at what time?
K: About eight.'
E: -' Ifttre- iS'.-
1K: A-Pi then go to school and stay for practice
E: So you had already put in three hours before you started classes everyday.
How long did you do that?'
K: All through AaiE ,'/'igh school. An,ig'd after I got out of practice, well if
they didn't come after me, I'd start walking home._ ;IJfive miles. And once in a
while, I'd see them. They'd beat me. But I walked about two and a half miles, halfway
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K: And then, if they were pressed for crates,-%% I'd go to the packing house again
and make crates until about nine o'clock.
E: So with practice after school and work in the morning, you were pretty busy.
K: 'W. ..
E: Was the curriculum hard? Were the teachers hard at q',iS ef High? Did you feel
challenged in a lot of the courses you took?
K: That's the whole thing. I never was challenged in high school. Like English. I used
to argue with the teachers about rules, why I should use this and why I shouldn't
use that. I'd argue with them. I didn't like literature. English literature or
I didn't like histor;,-;and' ...
E: And yet you took a lot of Af in college. tS, '.'
K: No, social studies.
E: Social studies, right.
K: I only took what I had to in college.* M you were required to take maybe six
hours of history to graduate.
E: Well, you say you argued with the teachers about english grammar, things like that,
K:'- V grammatical rules.
E: X _-i what was the basis for that arguing? a l."
K: They didn't think I was right and I didn't think they were right and I wanted to
prove I was right, and I would usually win my point.
E: S.=S ...E. do you think the teachers in general at Del Rey High
that you had were competent? LA i-f )
K: as a general rule they were.-E22 p- "laiP
E: Not the english teachers though, right?
K: Well, I'll let that go by but I was more impressed with the Latin and French
teacher because they were the same -:ersD:.ron'T'K
E: How'd you do in Latin -
K: But I was a brilliant, I had A's all the way through it.
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K: French was the same wayy,
E: No kidding.
K: With a good english background, especially in grammar, your Latin's easy. And with
Latin being easy, that made English easier. And with the Latin being easy, it made
French easy. Except in French, it's more of a musical sound.
E: What about the math courses? What kindoof math did you.)Ve-ei
K: I didn't like math.
E: Did you do well in it?
K: No, I just barely got by in second year algebra. In geometry I went to it
like that but I didn't know'hat '.l't l what I had take B chemistry and physics,
I got A's and B's in it, but I don't know how I did it.
E: What would you say were your best subjects or your best subject in high school?
K: English, Lati and French.-
__~/-----__- 2---
V,- 'Although I got good grades in chemistry and physics although I didn't know anything
about it when I got through with it.
E: I wanted to ask you soqnthing else about your family. Did your parents ever relate
many details of your ancestors in Japan? Do you know the area, for instance, that
your parents came from in Japan?
I T.
K: No,-Lthey never did come out and say much aboutVl- iMf"
E: You don't know then where your father was born or your mother was born
K: No, I wouldn't say I could pinpoint it.
E: You know which one of the islands?
K: My mother I think was from Kboto. I thought that was onlygI -ain island though
I guess. I can't even picture what the islands of Japan look like.
E: With Jo SakAi as your uncle, QcZhs gft& perhaps families stayed
pretty closely together then over there and it's quite possible then that your father
SAAcomo
came from the same area that JoeMSBSA did.
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K: More than likely, JS.
.4a s- in Philadelphi supposedly a long distant relative of mine, but I don't
I couldn't put my finger on exactly what I assume he made out some sort of a
family tree which connected our family with hers, but it was about four or five
generations back.
'So I don't know what that makes her to me.
E: Would you consider your own parents as having been very traditional, very stuffy
as you put it?
K: No. My dad wasn't that way. Like when we went to Chicago's World's Fair, well,
we had a ton and a half truck, we tobk a lot of stuff up there to that souvenir
stand we had, and all along the way, well, he'd see young girls on the side of the
street, boy, he'd wave at them and they'd wave bgck-.a -t-.
E: So Om he had a souvenir stand at the world's fair.
K: not him particularly. It was my brother-in-law.
SAn orange juice stand too.9eg it was within a Seminole indian village
that come from MianL mL- y brother-in-law was from Miami at that particular
time and so we sold our Florida souvenirs and orange juice, gI
E: How old were you when you went to the world's fair?
K: Sixteen.
E: O#aO1im That would have been what year?
K: [q32933./- H'Qrl l-r '1'-
E: _: F ij i ilF was that a real big deal for a sixteen year old
then?
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K: Well, I had just graduated from high school Ei B
E: Oh, you graduated young.
K: ga-
E: You must have started school early.
K: OSIW, that's the reason I figure. rglgg
E: Either that or you have a very late birthday.
K: I'm in March.
E: March? *j&U Well you must have started early then.
K: See, ^sii iff/1 if- when I at six, 4ag=i3SS ave been
eighteen(L he T- r( ( c- ehec
E: When is your birth date exactly?
K: March 12 I 1,
E: 4._. i .... h.. t, was that really something
to get excited over ? SUi1 *- re g was that a big experience for you at
the time, going to the world's fair?
K: Well, this is the funny thing about that. When I was going If to high school
then/I was mighty shy, and to get before a class and give a recitation or read a
book or something, that really got me.
SL:.;-Well, then when I went to the world's fair, this coach .iSS thatmifBcoache1.iefBt
in high schoolgi went to a seminar at the Northwesterr i .d SK m--iBat the fair
in Chicago, see, and so one day I was trying to sell water flowers out there and boy
I was making a spiel. You could hear me way across the way, you know, and he came
into the fair grounds and he spotted me about a block down the way and he said he
watched me for half an hour and he said he couldn't get over it. He said, man, I don'
know what happened but liJ you're altogether a different person from when you
were in school. As if.they'd asked me to do something like that in school, I'd
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K: have never done it. And yet,Agi '; I was in all the parades all through
grammar school and a couple of times in high school.
E: Did your father take the whole family to the world's fair?
K: Well, all that were going to work up there. See, W\tk&i it was three in the truck
and then we had a model 'A"'28 model' Alfour-door sedan, and that was full.
E: That must have been quite a trip out there.
K: It was fun. Eight of us went up theFe- u
-rA
E: Without any interstates that must haveA how long did it take you to get up there?
K: I think we only spent two nights on the road. Three days.
E: That's interesting.
K: Well, when President Harding came down the intercoastal canal, we heard about it and
I guess he got D oF - I
