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BN: So you're in Phoenix basically for just a year, right?

FS: What was that?

BN: In Phoenix, you were in Phoenix for just the one year?

FS: Yeah.

BN: So what happens after that?

FS: Well, I think they, because my conclusion is -- or my impression, they never told me -- is that they were paid so little, and I think they decided they were going to try to save as much money for bus fare from Phoenix to Guadalupe, and I'll bring up that reason. But anyway, because we ate a lot of spam like so many people out of camp, I think that would suggest that the pay was so poor, and, of course, she didn't have the cooking facility. Of course, I thought nothing of it because I love spam. [Laughs] It's like a staple for me. But I think at that time it was one of the least expensive products that Japanese Americans could buy after the war. But as soon as the school year, my dad had already, I think, made a decision there's just no future there. And they scraped enough money to, for a bus ride, Greyhound bus ride to Guadalupe.

BN: Why Guadalupe? What was the connection?

FS: Well, my mother's brother was, I think he lived in Guadalupe, but he was married there and he had three children there. I don't know the connection they had with this place that we were moving to in Guadalupe. Our first move, though, from Phoenix back to Guadalupe was to the Buddhist church, back to camp kind of stuff because they had to stack chairs and things and hang curtains to separate the other family that was also there in the church. So, so me, that again was another traumatic transition for my mother back into that compartment, that type of thing, you know, you separate by using a sheet.

[Interruption]

BN: So how long were you in the Buddhist church (…), and then where did you go from there?

FS: Well, this is, okay, Guadalupe just had one street, right, basically. The church was a little bit off, located just away by itself. So I'm not sure whether it was pretty quickly, we moved to this... well, it's kind of like a real cheap hotel, if you can imagine. Guadalupe is a farming town and nothing but... and the building was a tin shed, corrugated tin on the outside, and the roof was corrugated tin. But the front had a commercial plaster kind of facade, and it had a door in the center so the hotel, you go through the center and there's little rooms on each side of this hallway going to the end, to the exit place. And if you can visualize a small room that were one-nighters, that's pretty small in Guadalupe farming towns. One-nighters for a lot of different reasons, too. I remember a guy that was kind of nice to me that stopped a few times, yeah, he had a motorcycle and probably brought some friends in there for one night. So it was... my room, for example, there was maybe... it was smaller than camp because it was the size of a cot, and in front of the cot was maybe a space about three by three at the most. And my parents bought me a phonograph right away that I could put at the foot of my bed. And the side of the cot was just maybe a foot or two, just a couple of feet. So maybe a room about five by eight or six, five by seven. So then the shower was fairly close. The shower was on the other side, which is about the size of three by three or if that big. But it had a window at the top so that it ventilates, I remember that. That was my area. My parents had a little room a little further back, I think. And then the front part of this building was where my dad and mother tried to make a living by having a short order... you can't call it a restaurant, it had maybe seating for eight people or something like that. Small counter with a table or two. And my mother, somehow they got a plate where you can fry hamburgers, that kind of thing, and my dad did the maintenance on the place or cleaned it up and served. And my mother did the cooking. Oh, and then they served beer, so that was another reason my father wanted to leave, because he didn't like the fact that I was growing up in this little space, restaurant, having to serve beer. Because all the guys, farmhands and people that came to have a hamburger or something, they could have a beer. So that lasted not even a year.

BN: Then this would have been, you're going to ninth grade there?

FS: I was ninth grade. And at that time, they were busing from Guadalupe to Santa Maria High School. So I took the bus every morning and started Santa Maria High School in the ninth grade. So you could see how my education is jumping around quite a bit, but nothing that was traumatic in that way.

BN: But you're having to make all new friends again?

FS: Yeah, but that was pretty easy.

BN: You're used to it by now.

FS: Still is. [Laughs]

BN: What was the demographics of Santa Maria High?

FS: My recollection is it was mostly white, I don't know. I really don't remember because you spend most of your day, you drive, riding a bus both ways, that's quite a bit of time just on the bus. I think there were a few Filipino people, or might have been some Mexicans. I recall having some friends who were both. But not close friends because, short term friends. I don't recall the demographics. I was raised in a way that I guess I don't see color the same way that a lot of people do. It doesn't occur to me. It did later for a different reason, but at that time, no.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.