<Begin Segment 11>

RP: Tell us about some of the other physical education personnel you worked for and with.

ES: Well my immediate superior was Elizabeth Moxley and I believe she had charge of the elementary school and the high school physical education and health program at Manzanar. And of course she was under Genevieve Carter.

RP: The superintendent.

ES: Yes.

RP: And so she would have been the one to evaluate your performance?

ES: Yes, she would have been the one to evaluate it. She was the only one among us that had a car. So every once in a while she would take us someplace, to Lone Pine or... and that first summer that I was here she took us to Tuolumne Meadows and we stayed with my parents who were camped up there at the time. That would have been probably August of '43.

RP: Were there other teachers that went with you too?

ES: Yes, I think Martha was one of them. I'm sure Martha was one, maybe Burmay Rude who married the pilot.

RP: Do you have any background about Elizabeth Moxley? Do you know...

ES: I don't have too much background. I can't remember the state she came from. She retired and went to Reno and she had, I think she had rheumatic fever when she was a child because she was left with a heart condition. I know she didn't do much hiking because of her heart.

RP: Does the name Yae Nakamura, is that familiar to you at all?

ES: She seems to be, was one of the helpers with the girls physical education.

RP: Did she help you out personally?

ES: Yes, I think we worked together there for a while. But then they hired Margaret Sawedell to take some of my classes and Margaret then taught general science.

RP: And you had a previous relationship with Margaret, didn't you?

ES: Yes, we had met on the tennis courts at Huntington Park High School, on Saturdays and Sundays we'd play tennis. And then we went to City College together, then she went to Berkeley for her junior year and then came to UCLA in her senior year and was one of my dorm mates. So when they needed another physical education teacher I recommended her and she was hired.

RP: So she took over a little bit of your work load?

ES: Yes.

RP: Sounds like you had quite a few classes and some large classes.

ES: Yeah, 'cause I had six classes a day.

RP: Did you feel overwhelmed by that?

ES: No, I was glad to be kept busy.

RP: Another name --

ES: The worst problem is trying to remember everybody's name.

RP: And pronouncing their names.

ES: Yes.

RP: Did you ever think about renaming some of the girls?

ES: No, no. [Laughs]

RP: Sometimes the teachers would give them you know American names to make it a little easier.

ES: No, I called them by their Japanese name or their American name, whichever one they like to be called by.

RP: Another name I'm going to share with you. Chicky Hiraoka?

ES: Chicky, I think she was one of our Funsters.

RP: The book mentioned her as a girls athletic manager.

ES: I don't know if it was the same one but I think I had a Chicky in the Funster group. I can't remember a girls athletic manager.

RP: Did the girls get any type of sweater or something, you know, that boys would always have letterman's jackets. Did the girls have any sort of identification of the association?

ES: You know I can't remember. I think they had something for their Funster group though. I think they had a sweatshirt or something that said Funsters on it.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright &copy; 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.