Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Kenge Kobayashi Interview
Narrator: Kenge Kobayashi
Interviewer: Alice Ito
Location: Klamath Falls, Oregon
Date: July 4, 1998
Densho ID: denshovh-kkenge-01-0012

KK: Well, one of the thing that they found out was the WRA was stealing some food like meat and selling on the black market, which we were supposed to get. So I, as a kid, I said, "Well, we're going to go in there and steal the meat back." So we went in the cold storage, and we lug out all these meat and took it back to our mess hall, and we had steaks for a whole week. [Laughs] But in the meantime they were throwing tear gas at us and everything and pretty soon there was martial law. And then the army came in with their tanks and started shooting the guns and everything.

AI: Were you there during the shooting?

KK: Yeah. But they didn't shoot at anything, they were shooting at people's, up high, so they didn't shoot anybody, but they were scaring the hell out of everybody. And they were coming between our barracks, the tanks, and shake. Our whole barrack was shaking.

AI: What did you do?

KK: We were hiding under the bed scared. [Laughs] Anyway, we didn't know what was gonna happen. We thought they're going to start killing everybody. Who knows?

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