<Begin Segment 6>

RP: So during the time you were attending UCLA 'til the time you came to Manzanar were you aware of what was happening to Japanese Americans on the West Coast in terms of being removed and sent to camps like Manzanar?

ES: Well, everybody was afraid. They were all so afraid that we would be bombed you know like Pearl Harbor was so most of the people at that time were glad that they were interned. And I was busy in my senior year there and didn't pay too much attention what was happening with the Japanese. So when I was told when I applied for a job at the job placement center there in UCLA when they told me about Manzanar. I said, what is Manzanar? I knew so little. But when I heard it was in the Eastern Sierra I was all gung ho for going 'cause I had really wanted a job at Bishop High School or Lone Pine High School. And so Manzanar was the closest I could get to and be in the Eastern Sierra.

RP: Did you have any job offers from any other schools?

ES: From Huntington Beach High School. Their pay wasn't as good and I had to sign a contract whereas Manzanar the pay was better. Of course you worked twelve months a year at Manzanar where you only worked you know ten months actually it was only nine at one of the high schools in Los Angeles area.

RP: Were you given any other information about Manzanar when you took the job?

ES: They told me you know there was a Japanese relocation center and it would be all Japanese and that was fine with me. As long as I could teach physical education I was happy.

RP: How did you get up to Manzanar?

ES: My aunt was bringing my mother to join their husbands at Tuolumne and it was on the Fourth of July of '44, '43. Was it '43?

Off camera: '43

ES: '43. And nobody knew I was coming, they were all expecting me on the Greyhound bus. And they knew what time would be you know. So when I came about noon no one was there so I didn't know where I was, here I was and all I could see were Japanese men, it was the Japanese had their police station you know. Well, it was the kiosk up front with the soldiers I thought oh my gosh what am I getting into? Here are these guard towers, you know, and this group of soldiers at the kiosk in front and then the Japanese men at the police station behind that. Oh, my gosh, I'd better turn around and go home. But finally they found somebody that was expecting me that day but on the bus, so then they welcomed me and showed me to my barracks, my tarpaper barracks and where I would live and showed me the latrines and I think I must have gone to lunch. But anyway everybody was so friendly that pretty soon I felt at home.

RP: When you first got here, school was out.

ES: Yes.

RP: And what did you do as your first kind of position that summer?

ES: Well, I didn't know what I was going to do and then they assigned me to teach kind of a preschool kindergarten group of Caucasian children from the administration and the teachers and that was a lot of fun with the little children. So I taught them little dances and rhymes, nursery rhymes and songs and we had a good time doing that.

RP: Do you remember any of the kids that you taught?

ES: Well, there was Genevieve Carter's little girl and Sandy Sandstrom, I guess his little boy. Those are the two I remember mostly.

RP: How many kids did you teach all told?

ES: Oh, I think there must have been around ten maybe. I don't think there were more than that.

RP: And then you taught in a barrack room?

ES: A barrack room, yes. So I did that and that was about all I did. And prepare for teaching and getting my barracks room for teaching ready.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright &copy; 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.