Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Mary Kageyama Nomura Interview
Narrator: Mary Kageyama Nomura
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Torrance, California
Date: July 9, 2009
Densho ID: denshovh-nmary-02-0024

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TI: So going to Pasadena, so you went back in January of '45, so that's right when the West Coast was opened up.

MN: Opened up, yes.

TI: And so I'm curious to see what the reaction was. I guess... I don't want to say welcome, but I guess it was more reaction from the people in places like Pasadena when Japanese started coming.

MN: It was very fortuitous, I guess you would say, that we were in Pasadena because there was a huge hostel there run by the American Friends. So we were neighbors just down from the street from (them), and we had the support of them plus the fact that I was able to go into school, I think maybe pulled strings in Manzanar with the teachers, one of the teachers who was a counselor, tried to get me into college in the East Coast. But I said, "I won't go because it's too far from my family." So I went to Pasadena instead. And I didn't have the feeling that I was welcome. I'm being, like, a shy person to begin with, I felt like they were staring at me and saying, "What are you doing here?" There was another Japanese girl there, she was already a student up there, and she was embraced. But I was new, and I just felt insecure. And so I didn't last long, I don't know how many weeks I was there, but I quit, and I went to work as a housekeeper.

TI: Okay. You mentioned going to the large hostel there, the American Friends. So they're also known as the Quakers?

MN: Yes, yes.

TI: Describe that. What was a hostel, what was it for, who was there?

MN: They were welcoming all the people from camps. And we all stayed there. And the ironic thing about that is the Quaker reverend that used to come to our camp, Reverend Nicholson, who was from Pasadena, he was a missionary in Japan and all, and he used to come to church, conduct the Christian services in Manzanar. He used to come to the hostel because he lived in Pasadena. He actually married my husband and I at the hostel. We got married in the hostel with the people there. We has just the people who lived at the hostel as the guests, plus my husband's mother and his best man came from Manzanar just for the wedding and went back.

TI: The person who introduced the two of you?

MN: Yes.

TI: Right. So going back to this hostel, so this was set up by the Quakers specifically to help Japanese return to Pasadena and get them started again.

MN: Uh-huh.

TI: What kind of building...

MN: It was a large home. And they used all the rooms that they could, to put the people up. And they made arrangements for people to be able to take other people in, they had their Quaker Friends and their American Friends group. And they, in turn, called people in Los Angeles, and some of the people relocated to the ones in Los Angeles. It was a wonderful thing that the Friends did for the people who came here out of camp.

TI: Yeah, that is... it's often not well acknowledged in terms of what the Friends and some of the groups did to help Japanese come back to the West Coast or other places for that matter. Because I know they're known to help people resettle in places like the Midwest and the East during the war. And I didn't know as much about these hostels on the West Coast. And so before, we talked about your wedding at the hostel. When did your husband come to Pasadena?

MN: He came in March of, March of '45, and then he stayed. He was able to leave camp, but his mother was still in camp, and she just came out for the wedding and went back into camp. And she did not come out until November of '45 when the camp closed, when the rest of the family all came out.

TI: So I'm curious, so Shi comes out in March to get married. His mother comes to the wedding, and I guess the question I ask, why go back? Why not...

MN: She didn't have the clearance to relocate, 'cause she had no place to go to. You had to have a place to be able to go to, and Shi had a place to go to because my future sister-in-law's parents had a home, renting a home, so he was able to stay there. If they had no place to stay, no one to accept them as a resident in that place, they couldn't come out of camp. They had to have the clearance. And so when the camp closed down, (Shi's) family had a place to go to, and they went to Buena Park (to farm).

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.