<Begin Segment 5>

TI: So going back to you and Ellen, so how close were the two of you during this time period?

JO: Well, there were thirty people in our classes, that was a lot, and that would mean about twenty girls, maybe, all together. So we took all of our classes together, there was an A group and a B group, fast group and a slow group. We were in the fast group, and Ellen was one of the leaders. She was very good in sports, which I was not, so we didn't have that in common. But she was also very talented in art, and we enjoyed all the same things. There was no... was she my closest friend? No. But when she left, we really all hated to see her go. But by the time we were sophomores, I believe, in high school, her father decided it was time to go home, and they reestablished their home in California.

TI: And do you know where in California that was?

JO: It was in Central Valley (...).

TI: And during those several years as she was in Monticello, did it ever come out that she was at Poston or at a camp?

JO: Never. It was never... and, of course, nobody in our little town or in history ever mentioned anything about the incarceration. Now, there are people who are my age who say that at their tables it was discussed. It was not discussed at our table. It was not, the war was not a topic that was... my parents were not very political. In fact, one was a Republican, one was a Democrat. [Laughs] And Democratic had (their headquarters) downstairs in our building. But it was just not a topic that was discussed. And if my parents had opinions about it, I never got to ask them about their opinions. I sort of know what their opinions would have been.

TI: And what would that be?

JO: They would have been appalled. They would have been appalled.

TI: So they would have been appalled that they would have taken these Japanese Americans off the West Coast and put them in camps.

JO: Well, here we have the situation in which Jews were being put in camps, (...) the only political event that I remember clearly from my childhood, and I should have mentioned it earlier, was the day that the Warsaw ghetto fell. It was the only time that I saw my father cry. And my father, being an engineer, had a shortwave radio as most people did during those years, and he was listening to the broadcasts about the war. And I asked what was wrong, and he said, "The rest of my family is gone. I've lost my family today." We probably had lost the family long before, I'd read about the small town that he came from, and they were all rounded up and they were taken to Bergen-Belsen, which I only recently found. But one of his cousins did survive, and that's a different story. They got mail many years later from a displaced person camp from a cousin whose house they had stayed in on their way to America. And my parents sent clothing, and then they sponsored them. The husband of his cousin was a medical doctor. They came to this country and he could not practice medicine here. And it was really, he was so destroyed. One of his sons had been taken by the Russian army, which was what my (...) grandfather had escaped. But they were in that part of Germany where they were taking some of the displaced people. They never saw that son again as far as I know. Another son who was my age, or just a little bit older, came to this country with them and worked for a short time and then he was drafted. And guess where he was sent? He was sent back to peacetime Germany, and he was there for the entire time of his service.

TI: Going back, when you saw your father cry about the fall of the Warsaw ghettos, what were you thinking? Even though he kind of told you what happened, what were some of the thoughts or feelings going through you?

JO: Again, well, children think about, will they be safe and who will take care of them. It was frightening. My father could not make a living, and he couldn't be in service, he was too old. But, so he, being an engineer, volunteered to serve in the signal corps, and he trained engineers. He went away from our home, he lived in Troy, New York, which was not very far, except my mother couldn't drive, and there were gas shortages, so to get to see him, it was a very occasional thing. But he made a living, and he also felt he was, most of all he was doing something for his country. And we were proud of that as children.

TI: Going back to the time Ellen was in Monticello, you mentioned earlier that your impressions of Japanese were formed by these propaganda pieces. So how did it change by having a Japanese American in your town?

JO: She didn't look like anybody that they were representing on the screen, and she certainly didn't look like anybody that was in Superman comics, and she certainly didn't look like... she was just, she was Ellen. [Laughs] We laughed together, we played games together, we struggled with the same teachers together, and I think that I'm not sure what she would tell you about what she experienced at firsthand, or what her impressions were, but she always speaks very fondly of her time in our town.

TI: So later on, did she ever mention that there were some hardships for her family?

JO: Never, never. And I never understood why until many, many years later. When I started researching Dear Miss Breed, I actually should back up and say I really began researching Miss Breed because of Ellen.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2013 Densho. All Rights Reserved.