<Begin Segment 8>

RP: Elaine, do you recall what was your impressions when you first came into the camps the first few days and literally you're amongst ten thousand Japanese Americans, you had very little contact with that group in your life. Was that overwhelming to you?

ES: No, it wasn't. It just seemed to be natural after a while. We're all alike actually. Maybe our skin is a little different color or our eyes, but actually we're all human beings. I became friends with a lot of them.

RP: When you started school in the fall of 1943 you had an interesting first assignment and that was teaching boys football?

ES: Yes, boys football, seventh grade. I had never known what the word F-U-C-K meant. Here I was twenty-two and never heard the word. It was my first experience was to see it drawn and the word and what it meant drawn on one of the walls of the barracks of my seventh grade football class. But teaching football I just had the rule book and that was about all. Fortunately, I wasn't there more than a couple months and one of the Japanese men took over the football.

RP: Did you take the kids out and play in the dirt?

ES: Play in the dirt, yes.

RP: And how did they feel about having a woman as a coach?

ES: I think they would have probably preferred a man. I didn't have any problems with discipline, they were good boys.

RP: So you taught almost everything.

ES: I taught all the sports. We had tennis and softball, volleyball, basketball. We didn't have any archery, we didn't have any equipment for that. And soccer then wasn't a big thing so there was no soccer.

RP: What was the --

ES: My eyes are dripping. I have this tears, old age eyes I guess.

RP: What was the state of girls sports when you first started teaching?

ES: As I said, there were some intramural sports, but competition was not approved really for girls or women at that time.

RP: Even here in the camp?

ES: Even here in the camp. But there was nobody to compete except with the, we couldn't compete with other schools. So then one day I asked my supervisor if we might have a play day and invite the girls from Bishop High School and Lone Pine High School and I believe Big Pine had a high school. And so she got the permission and I think that's the first time that we had the Caucasians from the nearby towns come into the camp. And we had the play day and we had sports arranged and our girls playing the Big Pine or Bishop or Lone Pine girls. And so I thought that was a good thing that they could meet each other.

RP: And how did that work out overall?

ES: It worked out really good. It was a success.

RP: Was there just one play day or several that followed that?

ES: No, there was just one play day. It was toward the end of the year of '44, I think it was in May of '44.

RP: And what sports did the girls compete in?

ES: We had volleyball and we had baseball and we had basketball, those three sports.

RP: That's great. Were you aware of the... I think it was 1944, it might have been after you left camp that there was a football game between Manzanar High School and Big Pine High School?

ES: That might have been after I left. That would have been a good thing. There might have been the start of that year that before I had left before the start of that other year, I left in August. And then school started in September, it might have been that fall that the football team.

RP: I have a detailed question about that play day, but can you recall the reactions of some the Caucasian girls who came into the camp in reference to just being in the camp?

ES: I think they were all glad to see what the camp was like. I mean, everybody was friendly and I know the people in the surrounding towns weren't too happy to have Manzanar here. But I thought it was interesting and I was here to teach the Japanese and my husband was there fighting.

RP: In the Aleutians.

ES: Yeah.

RP: I wanted to talk about some of the specific sports that you taught here. First of all baseball, you taught baseball?

ES: Softball.

RP: Softball.

ES: Girls it was always softball.

RP: Were the girls pretty enthusiastic about that sport?

ES: Yes, they liked softball.

RP: And was there a particular area that you played your softball games or you just went out to the firebreak and found --

ES: It was the firebreak, yes.

RP: What did you use for bases?

ES: I noticed that today when we were driving around that there was a baseball field and the bases were... I think we must have had bags of some sort.

RP: And how about in terms of baseball, did you have enough bats, did you have enough balls? Were you always handicapped by a lack of supplies?

ES: Well, yes, we were handicapped with lack of supplies. I can remember requisitioning material for pennies where we needed to designate the teams. Like we would need some red material or green or blue and it took me months to get it. Well, during wartime they probably thought that pennies was a... didn't amount to much considering what they needed was guns and tanks and planes.

RP: Were there other supplies that were in short supply, like balls?

ES: Well, we always had enough to play a game. We didn't have enough for practice, we could've used more balls.

RP: And how many periods of PE did you teach in camp?

ES: I taught six periods a day. My smallest class was maybe around thirty-five and my largest class was close to ninety.

RP: Ninety?

ES: But I had seventh and eighth and ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth grades to teach.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright &copy; 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.