Kiyoshi Mike Nakagawa was born in Lodi, California in 1931. He talks about how his family came to the U.S.; his father's side had originally gone to the mainland and his mother's side had gone to Hawaii. He talks about the mutually supportive relationship that existed between the Japanese, Portuguese, and Italian immigrants in his neighborhood when he was a child. He went to Hiroshima with his mother around 1938, while his father stayed in the U.S. and was forced into the Tule Lake concentration camp after the war started. He discusses how he ate a wide range of both Japanese and American meals while living in the U.S., but he remembers really missing foods like pancakes and hamburgers after coming to Japan. He was doing student mobilization work at a factory outside of the city on the morning when the bomb was dropped but was still blown about three meters back; he fortunately suffered no serious injuries. He recalls that his father sent him packages containing cigarettes, which he sold to a stationary store, aspirin, chocolate, and Levi's jeans. He returned to the U.S. in 1949 and served in the Korean War, where he mentioned he was shot at by Chinese soldiers using bullets made in Japan that the Japanese army had left behind in World War II; he also suffered damage to his hearing that required $5,000 hearing aids to fix. He got married in 1963; his wife is present for the interview and talks about her impressions of the U.S. He says that he didn't really think of himself as a hibakusha until recently. He didn't receive his genbaku techō until 2005.
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