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RP: What was the experience teaching at Manzanar here like for you, reflecting on it?

ES: Well, I really loved to teach. My husband didn't want me to work and of course I had so many children that I didn't think I could do a good job with both of them, teaching and raising a family. And then another thing that kept me from teaching again, I had a son that was paralyzed from polio and I didn't want him to go to a handicap school. I wanted him to go to a regular school and to do that I had to be around to take him to school and bring him home.

RP: Did you share with your kids your experience here at Manzanar as they were growing up?

ES: I think I've always mentioned it, yes. I loved teaching.

Off camera: We always had more fun visiting, Martha was always a visitor to our home and every year when we drove up 395 to go to Tuolumne Meadows to camp, every year we were woken up to say, okay here's Manzanar. As this building was still there and there were the guard towers so we always knew, we're passing Manzanar. Where are we? We just passed Manzanar.

ES: This building was used for maintenance.

RP: Yeah, after you left they did play volleyball in here and some other sports.

ES: Yeah, as soon as they got this building finished... but it took so long for them to finish it. I kept hoping it would still be finished in '44 so that we could... I can't remember just when it was started.

RP: And just to kind of go back to the story you shared about how your father passed away. Can you share that with us?

ES: Well, he always went to Tuolumne, he never missed a summer. And this year it was in 1954 he and my mother had stopped at Silver Lake to visit his cousin who was camped there. And the next day they drove up to Tuolumne and they'd played cards with friends of theirs up there. And my mother was going to go with him but she woke up with a headache and decided she wouldn't go. So he went with his friend, my dad was sixty-five, and the friend he went with was seventy-five, Joe Brenner was his name. And they hiked to Skelton Lake and that's cross country, there's no trail, and it's seven miles from Tuolumne while they were eating lunch his friend heard this loud kind of groan like, he thought it was a mountain lion. It was my dad having a heart attack. So then they... about an hour or so later he asked my dad if he felt like he could walk back and my dad said yes. And about a half mile from the lake he just collapsed and was gone. But he always said he wanted to die in Tuolumne Meadows with his boots on and this time he even had a plus with a limit of fish. So he was a lover of the Sierras, especially Tuolumne Meadows.

RP: Few more questions. How did your parents respond to the news that you were taking a job at Manzanar?

ES: You know, I can't really remember. They gave their approval I guess because... of course, there probably wouldn't have been anything they could've done. By that time I was twenty-two so I could make up my own mind. Anyway, my dad was probably glad it was here in the eastern Sierras that I was going to teach.

RP: Is there a particular sight, sound, or smell about the camp that you'll always remember?

ES: I think all those rows and rows of tarpaper barracks is the thing I'll always remember and the guard towers. And I wasn't sure about, you know, putting the Japanese in these camps. I certainly didn't like the way that they had to sell their belongings for practically nothing. I was glad it was called a relocation so that they could relocate which quite a few of the younger people did. I don't think many older people relocated but the young ones did. I was glad to see that. But then the air was full of animosity in the Los Angeles area against the Japanese, you know, for what they had done. That there might have been a lot of shootings and killings. At least they were safe here.

KP: I just have one question. You were here for, what, about a year and a half working?

ES: I think about fourteen months all together.

KP: So you came, worked, did your job then you left. Did you ever think while you were leaving what would become of these people? You know, did you ever think, well they'll be out in a couple years. What was your thinking on what their future was?

ES: Well, my thinking was that as soon as the war was over they would be sent and it was going to be awfully hard for them to get back into the circulation with the Caucasians and the difficulty of finding a job. But knowing the Japanese, that they'd make it, and they did. I was thinking of my Funsters girls and nearly every one of them went to college. And I figured that they had a very good education at Manzanar. They had some good teachers and I found that they always said you know how smart the Japanese students were. And then when I had them in class I realized they were just like the Caucasians, you had your smart ones who worked and wanted to get ahead, and you had the other ones that got their Ds and their Fs. One of the girls I liked the most I had to give an F for her grade in physical education and yet we both liked each other. She knew she deserved the F and she was probably one of them that escaped from the firebreak. [Laughs]

RP: Elaine, do you have any additional stories or memories that we hadn't touched on?

ES: I think we must have covered everything.

Off camera: Mom, on the drive when we took you said you walked through the orchards and then sometimes you would leave the camps through the openings in the barbed wire.

ES: Oh, I think I mentioned something about taking our walks usually with Martha and Margaret Sawedell and Burmay.

Off camera: I don't think they knew that you were exiting the camp through the openings in the fence and not through the main gate.

ES: Oh, no, because we wouldn't go by the main gate. We went out that way towards the mountains on some of our walks.

RP: Mary, do you have any other stories to share?

Off camera: That's probably about it. She and Martha have had a very very long relationship that was you know started here. And I always know although I've never met Kazi, I've always only always heard always about Kazi growing up.

RP: Well, thank you very much, Elaine.

ES: Well, thank you, Richard.

RP: On behalf of us pansy rangers and the National Park Service.

Off camera: The now pansy rangers.

ES: Yeah, 'course, I realize that now they've got so many lawsuits that they can't take some of these trips.

Off camera: I keep telling her that because that's my excuse for you guys, there's just too much liability with rangers leaping over rocks and leaving their followers clutching to rocks.

ES: Well, they really worked hard though in those days, the ranger naturalists. And on their days off they would go exploring to see where they could take somebody on a new trip that hadn't been taken before.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright &copy; 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.