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TI: So I want to now go, before we go to school and other things, I want to talk about a trip you took to Japan.

FC: I was already in school when we took that.

TI: Oh, were you in school? Okay, but let's talk about that now because it kind of goes along your mother's story, and so why don't we talk about going back to Japan? You're, I think about, what, seven years old?

FC: Yeah. I was second grade and, I just finished the second grade in Maryknoll School, and it was also in the second grade that five or six of us from that grade were invited to a birthday party for Shirley Temple.

TI: Well, let's talk about that first then. Okay, go ahead.

FC: At Twentieth Century Fox Studio, so we all got dressed in our kimonos, and before we went the nuns would sit us down, tell us how to use the forks that were on the table, and they made us practice eating so that we wouldn't embarrass ourselves.

TI: How big a star was Shirley Temple at this point?

FC: Oh, she was in her heyday, Captain January and, what was that, Little Miss, whatever it was. She was, she was the star.

TI: And in terms of age, what was her age?

FC: We were the same, roughly the same -- actually...

TI: Okay, so that was the whole, the whole idea.

FC: That's why we were chosen. She was actually a year older, but the studio had her, concealed her real age and had her be a year younger. So we sat at this luncheon table and she was at the center with her little bouncy curls and her sweet smile, and she was really very charming and very nice. And there were like eight of us that sat and had lunch with her.

TI: And, interesting, you were in kimonos.

FC: Yes. And so we gave her a Japanese doll, and the priest had arranged -- there was a priest that did a lot of the trying to raise funds for the Maryknoll Society, and so he was the one who had arranged this. And it turns out that the photographs that they took of this, of us being there were sent to, all over the country and even out of the country, especially to Japan, and so when we went to Japan people had already known, had pictures of this in their fashion and home magazines of our birthday celebration.

TI: And you were in it, so they could see you. And so you were kind of a --

FC: So when I met my grandparents that was the first thing they said was, "Oh, this is the granddaughter that was at Shirley Temple's birthday party." [Laughs]

TI: Interesting. Do you have any of those photographs?

FC: Yes, I still do.

TI: I'd love to, we'll talk afterwards. I'd love to be able to get a picture of those.

FC: So that was a big, big thing. I always say my claim to fame was when I was seven years old. [Laughs]

TI: But on the other hand, I think of the age you were and Shirley Temple, there's a sadness too, that her birthday party was a PR event with people she didn't know.

FC: Yes. But she was doing that all the time.

TI: You just think of these child stars and what their childhoods must be like. It's just sort of this -- [coughs] excuse me -- facade of these PR events.

FC: Yeah, what I remembered, that she really was pretty poised and was friendly, and she knew exactly what was required of her and she played the part. And she gave us all autographed photographs, which unfortunately I've misplaced. I've lost it. But I do have a couple of photographs left over.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.