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MN: And now you had your first baby, Chrislyn Kei Ito. How did you come up with her name?

TI: Well, I wanted to name her Carolyn, but Jim's sister had a girl named Carol, so I didn't want to take Carolyn. So then I thought of Chrislyn, I put the two together, sort of, and that's how she became Chrislyn, but nobody calls her Chrislyn, everybody calls her Chrisie.

MN: And then three years later you had your second child. And how did you pick his name?

TI: Well, there was a attorney, and his name was Lance Smith, that helped Jim with selling and all the things he had to go through to sell the ranch that he owned. And his name was Lance Smith, and I guess his mother chose Lance because it was such an unusual name at that time. And there weren't many Lances during that era, so I thought, well, he was such a nice attorney that I'll name Lance after him. Because "Ito" is such a common name, and there are about six Jim Itos around. And so I said, "I'll have to really choose an unusual name. But now it's so common, a whole lot of people have the name Lance.

MN: And what about his middle name Allan?

TI: Well, that was named after a congregational minister who was the one that took stewardship of the Hollywood Independent Church in Hollywood. And you know, the people in the Hollywood Independent Church, Japanese American Hollywood Independent Church, they were, they stored their belongings in that church practically up to the ceiling. And everything was intact when they came back, because this minister and his congregation took charge of that church while they were gone. And so we began to attend his church. And so, and he's a saint. He really was. And he was a man that was a reporter during World War I, and he saw war, and he became a pacifist. And he counseled with Lou Ayres, who was a pacifist, and he counseled with the conscientious objectors as well as the armed forces.

[Interruption]

MN: So we were talking about Dr. Allan Hunter. Anything else about him?

TI: Yes, he would visit Manzanar, and once there was a baby at Manzanar that really needed medical attention that they couldn't give at Manzanar. So they had the couple come out, and he went after them and brought them to his home and the army permitted it, so the baby could go to Children's Hospital. But unfortunately, the baby died.

<End Segment 28> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.