<Begin Segment 11>

NW: So as you're going, you're at Syracuse, you're going to school, you're in this nursing program. I'm curious, how did people treat you at this time? Either people who were in the program or you had kind of mentioned some of the patients that you worked with.

MW: I wasn't aware of any great prejudice or anything. I didn't find that I was always fighting some... I'm sure I was aware that they think, well, is she Chinese, is she Japanese? What is she doing here? I don't know what went through their minds. I don't think I paid much attention to that kind of thing. Wasn't anything blatantly prejudicial.

NW: And so where is the rest of your family at this time? You had mentioned that your...

MW: My family? Well, my folks came out to Cleveland to the hostel, and they settled in Cleveland. My brother went to Wooster College and then he was drafted, and he went to Japan. Frank went to Japan, too, and that was postwar. My brother worked in the lab, medical kind of thing. So Mother said when he came back from the service, he kept washing his hands all the time, so very conscious about germs. He and Frank went to Japan at the same time, but they never saw each other. And my brother sent me silk that my mother used to make my wedding gown. He never got to see it, I mean, he never got to the wedding.

NW: Oh, your brother?

MW: Yeah. So I was kind of mad at them for not trying to see each other in Japan. [Laughs] Silly things.

NW: And do you know at all what kind of work they were doing when they were in Japan? This was just for the military?

MW: Well, Frank was at Fort Snelling, supposed to be in intelligence, and he had to study Japanese, but I don't think he used it very much. My brother was in medical, so he was in a lab all the time. He was so impressed with his superior that he named his son Thomas Lane, which is the name of his supervisor. They became good friends. but life puts you in different kinds of situations.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2018 Densho. All Rights Reserved.